REVIEW: Penn & Teller, Live at Wolftrap
July 12, 1995
(c) Brian Wendell Morton
Well, gang, for those of you who missed the 7/12 show of Penn & Teller
at WolfTrap, here comes the review -- admittedly through my own biased eyes.
I say biased, because, having seen Jeff McBride, Peter Samelson (a short
act at the Magic Castle), and Copperfield all in the last eight months,
and P&T three times in the past year, I can pretty much say that I like
Penn & Teller the most of them all. Reasons why later.
As usual, I will try and describe as much as I can without revealing effects -- we leave that to Herbert "Chaim" Becker, whom I'd like to see in a face-to-face with an angry 6' 6"-tall Penn Jillette if Becker decided to "expose" any P&T effects. The safe bet: put your money on the big guy. Anyway, this review contains spoilers -- if you plan on seeing the show as it continues the tour, DON'T READ THIS. Someone else posted a review earlier with spoilers, and if I had read it, I would be disappointed. Take my word for it -- see it first, compare later.
The show was at the WolfTrap Filene Center outdoor amphitheatre in Fairfax, VA, with a heady, stinkin' hot temperature of about 88 degress at show time, 8:30 pm. At about 8:32, we heard Penn's voice booming out from behind the curtain on the PA, "Penn & Teller will be on stage in FOUR minutes! .... at the lovely Wolftrap Center." This continued at minute intervals over the standard pre-show Yma Sumac music.
At 8:34, P&T came out in the usual gray suits, and went into the "Casey At The Bat" straitjacket open. It was done the usual way, except with a twist provided courtesy of WolfTrap: a young black man on the side of the stage signing for the hearing impaired.
Penn, noting the man gesturing, looked at the audience and said, "For those of you who've seen this bit before, check out the look on HIS face once we get going..."
If you haven't seen it (SPOILER #1), Teller is strung up in the jacket over wooden spikes, and the rope runs across the top of the stage, down and is tied to Penn's chair. Penn says he will read Casey At The Bat in one minute, fifty-three seconds, after which he says he will "jump to my feet and take that all-important final bow."
When Penn sees, at about a minute, that Teller is getting close to being out of the straitjacket, he speeds up. And I mean speeds up. The poor guy on the side had no clue what to say -- I think he was signing lyrics from a Temptations song...
For the picky and/or anal, Teller was out in 1:41.
Next came the Harbin Chair Suspension, which has been argued over both here and in alt.fan.penn-n-teller after the Letterman appearance. I saw the Letterman show, and it is true, Dave is so busy trying to screw them up and generally be an obtrusive ass that it tends to diminish the effect. The script here is essentially the same as it was on Letterman, down to the cautioning of the volunteer -- "No reason for you to own Wolftrap..."
I would say that although their version is the best I've seen it done, I don't think they should be doing it, as the Chair Suspension is being done (and at a shoddier level) by magicians all over the world now, and it does no good for them to do it. Good misdirection yes. Good patter, yes. Polaroid-taking is inspired, yes -- but on the whole, it's not new or unique. They should scrap it. [editor's note and full disclosure: The full Lies of Brian stage show now contains a version of the Chair Suspension, a trick which P&T have retired from their touring show.]
Following that is "Looks Simple," which many call the "Seven Principles of Magic." This is P&T at their new best -- something that is clean, adheres to their "Bad Boys" image by "revealing," yet shows that, no matter how much you know, the magician wins by staying ahead of the audience. Unfortunately, the strong final vanish of the cigarette by Teller is lost in audience applause, and in a large outdoor venue like WolfTrap, is dwarfed by the size of it all.
Next is Penn's juggling broken bottles, also a new item ("new" in the sense that it's something added in the last year). The writing of this bit is superb (Penn's standard aside about juggling flame in a "firetrap like this" carries more than a little irony, as this is the _second_ Wolftrap amphitheatre -- the first one burnt down in the 80s), but Penn, in this show, seemed to go on a bit too long about the sheer jaggedness and uneven weight of one bottle. What was more enjoyable was his subversive anti-warning to children which amounted to "Kids, Try This At Home."
Teller came on next with "Salute To Recycling," which was the re-worked new effect of the rabbit-in-the-chipper-shreddder. Penn began by saying Teller, for the first time, would speak during this effect. A stagehand fired up the gas-powered shredder, and Teller came out and showed that his voice was completely drowned out by the noise.
After having an audience member pick a card, Teller tore the corner off, handed it back and dropped the card in the shredder, with the accmpanyingly satisfying sound of shredding and paper bits flying out the side. Teller drops the deck in, and when paper flies out, he reaches in the shreds and plucs out a restored card, which matches the piece held by the spectator.
He next produces a rabbit, which he places in a box on top of two construction sawhorses. He lifts the box, sets fire to the flash paper, and shows the box "empty." he then takes the top and the sides and drops them in the shredder. When the audience notes the bottom is still on the sawhorses, he makes a big show of not showing the backside of the bottom, but audience reaction forces him, with a mournful look, to drop the bottom in the shredder. When he looks into the top of the shredder, "blood" spurts out and hits him in the face.
Closing the first act is the number that everyone's been wanting to see, and when they do, they won't be disappointed -- the "Magic Bullet," better known as the bullet catch. Penn comes out with a .357 Magnum and gives a very sobering lecture on weapon safety (and a political jab at the anti-gun crowd) before saying that they were going to attempt the bullet catch, which has killed 12 magicians over the years. (Whether the number is correct is still up for grabs: I have reliable sources who say the research done for the Robinson book, "12 Have Died" is incomplete and inaccurate)
They pick three people from the audience -- the first person they ask for and get is someone familiar with weapons, in this case, a Washington D.C. police officer. The second is an artist, the third, a guy with a coin.
Penn gives the cop a choice of bullets after letting him examine the .357 (with a laser sight), and has the cop write his initials across the tip of the bullet with a colored marker of his choice. The artist is then called forward to draw something (a snake, in this instance) on the casing of the shell. The third guy flips the coin to decide who shoots, and who gets shot at. Penn loses, and gets to be shot at, to the audiences' appreciative applause. (Say that out loud five times fast.)
The artist loads the bullet in the chamber, Teller snaps the chamber closed, and aims at Penn through a glass pane mounted on a mike stand-like apparatus. Penn stands across the stage in front of a Kevlar screen wearing a bullet-proof vest, goggles, a cast-iron old-style combat helmet and holds a plate in front of his chest. Teller milks the audience for laughs as the red dot of the laser sight travels up Penn's leg and stops briefly over his crotch before resting on Penn's mouth. After an almost interminable silence, Teller fires, the glass shatters and Penn recoils.
Penn calls through his teeth for the cop, and when he arrives, Penn spits the bullet into the plate, and asks if a) it has been fired and b) does he recognize it, which the cop does. Teller opens the gun, and dumps the shell out in the artist's hand, and asks her a) has it been fired and b) does she recognize it, and she does. They ask the guy who flipped the coin to check out the glass and he notes there is a bullet hole at the edge where it shattered.
It was, as we say in magic(in this case ironically), "killer."
Intermission (first act lasted about an hour)
