"Harary - 'Hypereality' -- Magic Is About To Change"
reviewed by Brian Wendell Morton
(c) 1997 All rights reserved

Going to see Franz Harary's evening show, "Hypereality," at the Tropicana casino in Atlantic City is kind of like packing in a three-day weekend of watching magic on TV in an hour and a half. That may be good or bad -- it depends upon your opinion of the idiot box. But for sure, there were more than enough screens to watch it on in the Trop's showroom -- there were more than 28 monitors on the stage alone, by our count. If you add in the two giant projection screens flanking the stage, well, that's damn near enough TV for half of south Jersey, and the room was jam-packed full of it.

We went and saw the 9 p.m. Saturday night show, filled to capacity with a New York-New Jersey beachgoing crowd, antsy from either a day roasting on the AC boardwalk (no sane person goes in the water in Atlantic City) or glassy-eyed from a day in front of one of the approximately four-billion slot machines that litter the town. Atlantic City -- the Eastern Seaboard's rest home with slots.

So there it was, me, my wife and about 598 others looking at the vast expanse of the stage (and it's a _big_ stage), filled with vertical banks of television monitors, five to a bank, and then two six-tv banks in the far back on top of latticework girder arrays. A platform takes up most of the back end of the stage, with horizontal girders stretching across most of the platform and with the top girders in an array similar to that of prison fencing -- it was bent at an angle toward the audience.

Hanging from the rafters in front of us, dead center, is a giant 15-by-15 foot white silk banner with "HARARY" on it in day-glo colors; in the top right hand corner of it are the numbers ":00" and in the bottom right, ":1998". Computer animation fills the projection screens and the monitors on the stage; they show a "Deep Space 9" type of space station with revolving wings. When each of the "wings" points at the viewer, it resembles yet another monitor, these with footage of Hahary performing various illusions before crowds around the world and on various television talk shows both in other countries as well as stateside. One of the most noticeable elements of the graphic design of the stage is liberal usage of the nuclear materials symbol - the yellow or orange circle with three inward-pointing black triangles inside. At the foot of the stage, on the stairs leading down to the audience, is a large sheet with the symbol in the center.

At 9:06, the lights dim and as the couple across from us are debating the pronunciation of Harary's name, the monitors blaze into a three-minute montage of the best of Harary on television worldwide -- one second he's levitating a car, the next he's making a building vanish, , making two jet-skis float in air at some sort of auto show, making an 800 lb. gorilla appear in a parking lot, and so forth. The montage answers our tablemates' question: it concludes with about 50 jump-cuts of nearly every talk-show host who's ever sat behind a desk introducing "Franz ... ""Ha-RAR-y," "Ha-RAR-y," "Ha-RAR-y," "Ha-RAR-y," etc. If you didn't know how to say it before, now you know.

He appears in a blast of white light on the platform in the back of the stage, and bounces down toward the audience, wearing a white tee shirt, black jeans, big clunky steel-studded boots with about 2 1/2 inch platform heels (is every big-time stage magician except Copperfield shorter than five-foot eleven inches tall??), and a black leather vest; the vests seem to be as much of a trademark of his as the "TIME-LIFE operator"-style head mike he always has on.

His first illusion was to produce his dancers in three "crystal casket" pyramids by having stagehands drape them with the nuclear-logo sheets, Harary using the one on the stairs himself for the center pyramid. One of the reasons this review may take longer than most is because, except for the opener, for the most part Harary does not do standard illusions that nearly every traveling set of box-jumpers keeps in stock. To his credit (somewhat), he designs effects that don't look like anything anyone else is performing. We found out later, that this may be a blessing as well as a curse.

After the production of the dancers, he bounded down the stairs for his first audience volunteer. He brought her up on stage "to my place" where there were -- voila! -- three more TV's wheeled out by stagehands. What he does when he's not performing, he tells us, is go home, "turn on the tv, and put my brain on hold." Asking her if she wanted a drink, she got to pick a number from one to six, corresponding with six silver "multiplying bottles" type tubes on another small table. When her choice turns out to be Perrier (the others could have been things like 7-Up, Yoo-Hoo, etc.), he makes her a Perrier with lime by vanishing the glass and the bottle by using a scarf and the lime by rolling it onto the screen, after which they appear on the various screens showing rap videos (Heavy D, and Tupac were two of the three, for those who care). He then reaches into the side of the tv nearest himself, where his hand grabs the bottle, an arm comes out of the other side of that tv and enters the second, where it pours the water into the glass, and then across into the third tv, where he catches the lime. His hand emerges from the third tv wherein the female spectator took the glass. Withdrawing his arm from the three tv's his hand emerges with the Perrier bottle, which he then gave to the spectator as a gift.

His second illusion contains a change of theme -- a trip to Thailand. The dancers come out in elaborate
Thai constuming, and Harary has run offstage to change into a vest embroidered in similar fashion. After a bunch of Thai-inspired dancing, one of the dancers climbs into a temple/pagoda box, and with rear illumination she is transformed into a white kitten, which Harary introduces as "Casper."

Once again, a change of theme and scenery -- now we're "underwater" at "Sea Base Alpha." (The scenery change is preceded by a four minute dance routine where the dancers -- who squeal, yip and cheer so much we wonder from whose aerobics contest they escaped -- attempt to do a tap routine while wearing divers' fins and straight faces. The straight face part didn't succeed too well.) At the left side of the stage is supposed to be a mini-sub, marked "Sub Culture Sea Base" on the side in an LED-style typeface.

Harary chatted about how he was always a fan of water-based shows like "Flipper" and wondered if it was possible to do magic underwater. He then borrows a very nice silver ring from a guy at our table (Harary was very complimentary of the ring -- a good sign -- but then again, it had the Harley-Davidson emblem on it. Who wants to piss off a biker by making fun of his ring?) puts it in a cup and then gives it to a dancer to hold on a tray. A big tank of water, like an aquarium, is brought out, and he proceeds to do what Penn and Teller facetiously call "The National Magic Trick" in the tank with a red hankie (okay, a silk to the magic crowd -- I'm also trying to write this for laymen) -- he makes the silk appear underwater and then vanish. After that, he takes the cup and vanishes it (tip: same vanish the Pendragons exposed on WGM I), and then goes to the tank and covers it. Upon whipping off the cover of the tank, a dancer is inside, underwater, and holding the cup which she gives to Harary. Inside of which, as revealed by annoying close-up on projection monitors by cameraman wearing black stormtrooper helmet and jumpsuit, is the ring, which is returned to spectator to nice applause.

The next illusion is a different sort of "Walking Thru A Girl." Two vertical sheets of metal rolling on casters are brought out, each has a hole at elbow height at one end of each sheet, to correspond to the dancer's arms. She stands inbetween the two sheets with her arms poking through the holes and another dancer outside of each metal pane holding an arm. A paper barrier is pulled across to make a flimsy "door" trhough which Harary may tear once through. The dancer's back is facing the left side of the front of the stage so she is at a diagonal, and a another TV stormtrooper shows us the rear view as Harary walks directly toward the dancer, the camera cuts to the front and the view as if he melts through the girl and tears through the paper on the other side, emerging facing us.

The finale of the "Sea Base Alpha" segment has Harary and all the dancers enter the "sub," whereupon it is hoisted into the air. Suddently it begins to rock and all the sides fall away revealing it empty. He and the dancers appear at the back of the audience and race down toward the stage.

It was at this point, one of the most glaring flaws in the show manifested itself -- not just to us, but to several at our table. Perhaps it was the large time lag inbetween the vanish and the appearance, but we shall say that there was some major-league "flashing" going on, and if you were anywhere from the center to the left side of the stage in the first three rows of the audience, a little looking around would have netted you a clear view of exactly what was going on.

Harary then came out and introduced the Gamesters, the second performers on the bill, which serve as sort of an intermission in between Harary acts. The Gamesters were an impressive young duo performing a silent cabaret type magic routine in red and blue cartoony-style zoot suits for a gig lasting about 8-10 minutes. The duo acted as sort of a sucker/shyster pair in an elaborate choerographed monte situation where they "stole" money from each other, as well as shoes and hats. Noted in part of the act is a torn and restored newspaper mixed with chewing gum that has a charming finale. Almost to the point of being juggling, except with props such as big foam guns, giant monte cards and vanishing wads of giant $100 bills, they filled the stage with a broadly-played Marx Brothers zest, and earned a good, well deserved round of applause at the end. Maybe FISM 2000 could be seeing the likes of them...

The second half of the Harary show consists, he tells us, of illusions he's created for touring rock acts, which he finally gets to do himself. First is a sort of standing "Impalement" where he spears a dancer with a neon trident. While he changes into yet another vest, we are subjected to another video montage in which he replays the highlights of the WGM "Space Shuttle Vanish", followed by a quick minute more of the yipping dancers to some 80s-reminiscent techno-pop (It kinda reminded me of the old 1986 single "Digital Display," by Ready For The World. But I digress...)

A stentorian British voice comes over the sound system, and while it natters about being in a three dimensional world and finding a way to the second dimension, Harary is sandwiched between two sheets of what appear to be white rubber stretched around two large rings. After a good bit of pushing and stretching inside it (amid notice by some of the women at the table about how it looks like he's wearing a codpiece), he vanishes from between the sheets, which are opened up by stagehands. After more of the same in reverse, he reappears. A nice little trick.

The next piece I found kind of disturbing, as it involved what I consider to be a bit too much "beating up" on a spectator. Harary picked a nice red-headed woman out of the audience, looking to be in her mid-40s, dressed in a black blouse, tan shorts and gold heeled thong sandals, and upon finding out her name, introduces her to the audience as "Carol." He says he can always tell by the look in someone's eye that they've "always wanted to be a magician," so here was her chance. Outfitting her in a ludicrous gold-sequined swami hat and a silver-sequined tailcoat (he tells her "the shoes really make the outfit"), he stands her on an "x" and has her read some cue cards while her "studly assistant" Harary (as she's told to say by the cards) does all the work. Harary is standing by a giant Square Circle. The cards tell her what to narrate, he shows the prop empty (has anyone ever done kids shows and _not_ used this trick??) and she says there will be peanut brittle produced from the prop. She then is told by the cards to do the "Dance Of Enchantment" and Harary goads her into doing a silly little strut around the prop to the audience's amusement (She gamely threw in a wiggle that prompted him to ask "What was that little butt move there?" as the audience cackled). When the prop is still shown empty and she is brought by for a look, as she is taken back to her "x", a stagehand sneaks in an old gag peanut brittle can. When Harary asks her to open it, she gingerly aimed it at him, but nothing shoots out.

"Where's the damn snake!" he stage-whispers to the stagehand, and after having Carol do another pained "Dance Of Enchantment" and her sneaking a look back into the empty Square Circle, he pulls out a little rubber toy snake and gives it to her. "You're not afraid of snakes, I hope," he asked her. Then from the prop, he retrieves a 14-foot Burmese python -- which, to the audience's _extreme_ amusement, curls its tail up the crack of his butt and in-between his legs while he has it draped around his shoulders.

When "Carol" is returned to her seat, she is given a bag of peanut brittle and a Polaroid of the event by Harary. Hopefully she will not hate magic for the rest of her life.

The next set piece probably elicited more unspoken calls of "huh?" than anything else in the show. He called it "Time," and the effect was supposed to be sort of the same as the transmogifier box from the Calvin and Hobbes newspaper cartoon. Harary goes forward in time, retrieves one of his dancers from the future to stare at herself in gogglemouth wonder -- or as much as you can gogglemouth while wearing a radioactivity suit and helmet (with the nuclear logo on it, of course). He then goes back and retrieves himself from the future, and the double of him (his helmet says HARARY on it in big letters) goes back, taking the dancer's double with it. This, he explained before all the action takes place, is an example of "quantum physics."

All together now, "huh?"

Part of the problem, besides overreach, is that at any time, there are two people wandering around onstage with silver suits and helmets on -- so who being who without holding a scorecard becomes more of a mystery than the mystery is supposed to be. Secondly, when the dancer from the future goes back, she enters the hand-cranked "time machine" (Doncha just love anachronistic science!) through a black cloth "hole" in the front, which unfortunately helped flash some method while the Harary double was entering the chamber. Needs work.

After a set change revealing a bunch of wooden crates, he tells us a tale of a strange vase that managed to withstand numerous bombings in WWII and appears to have magical invulnerable properties. Implausibly, he tells us he managed to get one loaned to him, and he and a dancer bring it out from the inside of a box lit like the Ark from the Harrison Ford movie. Then he asks an audience member, who is seated on stage, to write his initials on it in black magic marker (Note: do _not_ lend this man any priceless vases). With a shout, he then smashes the vase on the floor inside a plexiglass enclosure. (Note: see previous note!)

The pieces are then gathered in a cloth and moved atop one of the crates. They begin to move, and once covered by a red sheet, apparently start to reassemble under the sheet. When the sheet is ripped off, the vase stands whole, with spectator signature intact. The vase is then placed back in its glowing ark, and Harary strikes a thoughtful pose before lowering his head to applause.

Next was "Cross Culture," a nice original piece that really is kind of an advancement on the old "double sawing." After telling us how he likes to browse CD bins when he travels overseas, he mentions a song he heard by a Japanese group that had a latin beat to it. With this in mind, he brings out two dancers, one in a blue kimono and blue satin shorts and one in a pink flamenco-style outfit with pink satin shorts. They are seated on barstools on a square platform divided by bars in the middle. Harary shows a large aluminum square with a round hole cut in the middle. A similar square is lowered over the two dancers, except this one has a black center with holes cut in it so that the upper torsos of the women may fit through. Once screens (pink for one side, blue for the other) are pulled around the bottom of what is now a box, the dancers each stick a stockinged foot through a hole on each side. Those are then each held by spectators brought up from the audience.

Harary pushes his aluminum sheet into a slot on the side, and then through both dancers. The two then revolve around in a full circle. After verifying from the spectators that they never let go of a foot ("well, almost" said the kid given the task on the pink side), Harary gives the word again and the two make a half-revolution. When the screens are removed, both dancers have their same tops on, but the bottom halves have been "reversed" -- the pink shorts are on the kimono-clad dancer and the blue on the flamenco-clad dancer. To audience applause, they leave as he tells them to "pull themselves together."

In a somewhat Copperfield-esque story (we probably all feel that way when someone "mines their past" for stories about their younger days as a magician), Hahary tells of when he asked his father to chain him in a box in a tree so that he could escape, a la Houdini. "I stayed in that tree all night," he says. A wooden box with two holes in it at waist-height is lowered from the rafters. Harary is placed in it, and chained around thw wrists. It is hoisted in the air, and as it reaches its peak, the hands have gotten loose of the wrist-chains -- but then the bottom falls out and you see a set of legs scrable to get back into the box. Then the box falls completely open, and Harary appears at the back of the audience by the sound board yelling, "Hey, Atlantic City! Back here!' and waving a large blue-and-white checkered flag.

At the finale, he goes down to the front of the stage and retrieves a toy red Corvette that he had given to a lady in the audience at the start of the show (he said then that it was a "special request"), and as dancers lift black cloth panels in front of the platform with the bent steel latticework, he tosses the toy behind the cloth. Lights flash, music blasts, and a red full-size Corvette is on the platform. As Harary thanks the audience, a large white single-engine plane is wheeled out on the left side of the stage (huh??), the dancers and stagehands take their bows, and the show is over.

A few notes from your jaundiced reviewer:

The show seemed kind of, well, unstructured. The Thai effect was a lot of costuming and elaborate props to produce, in the end, a kitten. The whole television thing was a bit much -- it's sort of like Calvin from the comic strip saying that life isn't validated until it's seen on TV. Harary in the end was almost playing more to his hand-held cameras than the real audience. The giant screens would sometimes show what was on stage -- and sometimes not. If you were in the back you'd constantly be refocusing your eyes from screen to stage. There was so much _ping, pop, pap, boom_ going on visually that in the end, sometimes the simplicty of the effect was lost. There's one particular illusion method that is just way too overdone in this show -- Jim Steinmayer, the great illusion maker, says that this particular method is abused to the point that it should be left alone (see Steinmayer's "Device and Illusion"). And that whole "Time" illusion -- whew! Send it back to the drawing board! And what in the world was up with that plane?

There were some good points: the "Cross-Culture" illusion was nice, and although there was serious believability problems in the "sell" for the vase illusion, there's a good idea in there. Much as I chuckle at seeing Penn & Teller's "National Magic Trick" done underwater, it was a decent attempt at translating a close-up effect to the stage. But more than anything else, there was some fatal flashing problems anytime a transposition was taking place. To his credit, Harary picks real people as his audience assistants -- not beauty queen stooges like a certain big-time magician seems to do. But the abuse heaped upon "Carol" -- making a suburban mother shimmy around a kids' magic show prop for the amusement of a beach crowd -- is downright shameful.

If you get a chance, sure, go see the Harary show. You don't often get a chance to see full evening shows these days. But remember that there's a lot of "Hype" before you get to the "Reality." And sometimes it _still_ looks like it's all happening on television.

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