Wonder, surprise, incredulity, excitement, joy. Maybe a rush of adrenaline. They’re all the things you’d hope to find in a magician worth his or her salt. And in Look Closer with Joshua Jay at Rhapsody Theater, they’re not only all present, each shine like newly minted gold. But in this magic show, you’re also enthralled by the things you don’t expect like the way Jay holds an audience with his disarmingly casual personability. That demeanor makes the magic he performs more striking because he doesn’t pose as someone dramatically different from his audience. The sport coat over his black T-shirt, the only touch of formality that separates him from audience, soon goes away and a carefully orchestrated series of events unfurl to prove you’re now immersed in an entertainment experience of the highest form.
Calling much of what he does in Look Closer parlor magic, Jay doesn’t provide names to any of the illusions he conjures. Some are new and some have appeared in other forms in the past. One that he enjoyed tremendous success with a few years ago on the Late Late Show with James Corden was an early part of this show. Full of deceptively complex simplicity, it involves the creation of a fairly lengthy and completely random number generated with the audience’s assistance, a dollar bill and a key word or name. He then reveals how each of them are linked to become, in effect, exactly the same thing. For the audience, it’s the equivalent of making a volcano appear in the middle of the stage, an impossibility that you couldn’t believe if you hadn’t watched it unfold. And before you have time to digest the magnitude of skill needed to achieve this feat, Jay’s off on a new magical escapade that requires other arbitrary and indiscriminate objects like “dad wallets”.
Investing lots of verbal space in Look Closer to letting the audience know who he is, how he came to magic and what it means to him, the magician’s magician surreptitiously infects the audience with his passion. Those reflections and explanations all testified to an unrelenting commitment to and love of craft. He told of how at age 7, his father, a hobbyist magician, showed him a card trick that completely transfixed him. It also baffled him and he couldn’t rest until he learned how it worked. In other interviews, he went on to detail how he went up to his room, closed the door and meticulously broke through the trick’s mystery to unlock its secret. It took him 4 hours. By 11, he was performing for 8-year-olds at birthday parties and venues like the Lyons Club. Since then, he’s compressed a lifetime of achievement into a couple of decades. Having plied his craft in more than half the countries in the United Nations, written six books on magic and now fresh off a Look Closer engagement at Carnegie Hall, the enterprising Millennial reveals an undeniable hunger to share the magic of magic.
Jay has said he doesn’t see magic as an art. “I see it as a craft, I think it can be an art if it’s really, really exceptional.” Look Closer is really really exceptional. That assessment becomes more and more evident the longer you reflect on all that the show encompasses and entails. There’s a certain shock factor that’s built into shows that stretch the limits of our sensory comprehension. You have a better understanding of what you experienced once you’ve had a chance to step away and analyze all the pieces that made it happen. The trick with the dad wallet where objects inexplicably end up in a balloon and the illusion of having coins travel invisibly across the stage from one person to the next will leave you wondering how any of what you witnessed was accomplished long after the you leave Rhapsody’s treasure box of a theater.
Look Closer doesn’t feel rushed. On the contrary, it feels as if its gliding by with unhurried ease until a routine ends in sudden awe. One segment was completely unexpected and so charming it might be thought quaint. In a show of whimsy and extraordinary hand dexterity, Jay sailed through a series of hand shadows where he portrayed animals including elephants, donkeys and swans. His projections even mimicked two lovers kissing. Rather than performing behind the screen, he kneels in front so the audience can see the agility and talent needed to execute these illusions. It was an artistic aside that shed a little light on the breadth of interest an inquisitive magician can embrace.
With the assistance of a cameraman and, this time around, video projection; he also demonstrated how mesmerizing his favorite type of magic, sleight of hand, can be. Regardless of one’s own proficiency, it’s impossible not to be humbled by the skills Jay exhibited with a stack of regulation playing cards. Simply setting up the trick looked like magic as he made a deck of cards seem to float, fly or stream from hand to hand like flowing silk. The trick he then performed during Look Closer would act as a formidable example of the vastness of his capabilities. On weekends, following the main stage performance, those with VIP front row seats are invited to join Jay upstairs for a private show of sleight of hand tricks. With very limited seating, others in the audience can attend for a fee if room is available. There Jay conducts a masterclass of what the highest form of his craft looks like. No matter how closely you look, the secrets of his illusions never make themselves known. But watching them unfold gives you a fresh respect for a level of craftsmanship that teeters on the sublime.
Look Closer with Joshua Jay
Through April 24th, 2024
Rhapsody Theater
1328 W. Morse Avenue
Chicago, IL 60626
https://rhapsodytheater.thundertix.com/
