Magic Tricks

What a lovely piece of magic, superbly executed by a real professional. With one caveat, I have nothing but praise. My concern? There is one very important moment. It’s a moment, really early on, where everything can turn to dust in an instant - unless it is well managed. We’re talking audience managment. Some simple instructions have to be followed precisely otherwise the trick is blown. So you’d think that these instructions would be pretty precise, right? Wrong. They are almost thrown away, lost in a bunch of other inconsequential instructions that are shared out amongst other participants.

Make no mistake, this casualness ultimately leads to the strength of the trick - a crucial instruction buried amongst a broader set of cod instructions, leaving the impression of utter casualness. Nothing could be better and it’s a moment that is handled with such deftness that nobody will later be able to reverse engineer it. But the risk…. The risk of putting over this instruction with a casualness that could be open to misinterpretation - and therefore a disastrous outcome - is simply immense. What’s more, so casual is the instruction that the trick runs the risk of being blown twice! Once, right at the start of the performance , and once, when the card is named. And that risk - that double jeopardy - left me very puzzled. I simply don’t believe that, in real life, this instruction - the lack of any emphasis and the deliberate muddling of it with other instructions - could be left to that degree of chance.

So what’s going on? I’m not suggesting there was any collusion, however, this is episode eight, so I’m guessing that everybody around the table knows each other, are very likely friends and some may be fellow magicians and many may even be familiar with the trick. All of which is fine, however, it does mean that Dani is amounts friends and may well have hand-picked the person he needs to give this crucial instruction to, knowing that he can then underplay it to the point of casualness that he would never risk with a stranger.

So a great trick and I’m very glad I made the purchase, but it is a trick with a conundrum, because if you do emphasise the instruction, (just enough to avoid disaster), then you also risk opening a door on the trick’s method.

Would I perform it? I would need to see some more performances to judge how this pivotal moment is handled in real life situations. And then I might. Because - make no mistake - it is a corker!