There is something wonderfully disarming about watching a room full of adults surrender to magic. We know there is a method. We know nobody has actually violated the laws of physics. We watch carefully, determined to catch the move, the distraction, the moment when one thing becomes another. Then Jim Vines and Carl Mercurio do whatever it is they do, and suddenly the sophisticated grown-ups are staring at the stage with exactly the same expression as the five-year-olds.
That is the considerable charm of Broadway Magic Hour, playing select weekends at 2 p.m. at the Broadway Comedy Club on West 53rd Street. The show is promoted for ages five and older, and children are very much part of the proceedings, repeatedly invited onto the stage to become accomplices in the afternoon’s illusions. But calling this children’s entertainment undersells what Vines and Mercurio have created. The children may be the most visibly enchanted, but the adults are having just as much fun.
Vines and Mercurio conjure something rarer than illusion at the Broadway Comedy Club: they conjure shared joy.
To watch Jim Vines perform sleight of hand is to witness a kind of visual lyricism. His dexterity is so refined that the technique seems to disappear, leaving only the impossible result. His credentials explain some of that assurance. Vines is a FISM North American Champion in Close-Up Magic, has performed in eleven countries and has appeared at Hollywood’s legendary Magic Castle. His appearance on Penn & Teller: Fool Us earned considerable praise from two men who make their living knowing precisely how magicians fool the rest of us.
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