Published in The Vancouver Province.

I really wished I hadn’t sat in the front row at David Copperfield’s “An Intimate Evening of Grand Illusion” at the Vancouver Centre of Performing Arts. If I’d just been sitting a few rows back I wouldn’t have seen the wires that controlled the singing and dancing tie, or the slightly concave bottom of the magical “shrinking table”, or the girl that appeared & disappeared in the “reserved” seat next to me wearing three different outfits, or Mr. Copperfield’s caked on make-up and spray-on hair. Ouch. That was a low-blow.

Maybe I’m just too cynical or I’ve seen “The Prestige” one too many times to be impressed with a duck being tossed on stage from behind the curtain. In Copperfield’s defense, his show was very entertaining, and face-paced enough to keep me off my iPhone for an hour and a half. There were great moments too. He is an incredibly skillful showman, and irritatingly charismatic, even when he made a sexy Eastern European girl shove her hand down his pants to make sure there was nothing in his pocket; not once, but twice. Charming.

I feel a bit naive for expecting to be completely wowed. But I just couldn’t get past the worn, cheap-looking props, the massive amounts of noxious smoke blown into my face, the planted audience members who could hardly manage a smirk at his rehearsed one-liners, and the cheesy-kitchyness of it all. I was far from amazed and bedazzled by the appearance of an old car on tall pillars in the middle of the stage. Because from my angle, I could see that it was a shell of fake car and that DC was fake driving it and the illusion was marred.

How he does a lot of his illusions still remains a mystery to me… mostly. Ok fine. The duck told me. And all it took was an Oh Henry’s bar.

But don’t take my word for it, check out the hair for yourself. The World’s Greatest Illusionist is conjuring up 5 more shows at the Centre for Performing Arts in Vancouver Oct. 25 & 26th.