Magic Tricks

What I love about this lecture is Dobson's material is so commercial and very workable. When I am performing close-up, I don't want to worry about an over-abundance of sleight of hand. I love stuff that is easy to perform and creates moments of wonder and amazement. I had heard so much about Wayne's Tossed Out Deck, and it really is a nice solution.

Dobson also performs a one card version of Brainwave, and it was impressive. Not sure I would do this, but it was nice.

Echo was a fabulous card effect that I will use in a show in August. It's sort of a one-deck You Do As I Do, though it is more You Say as I Say (which is where the Echo comes in), with a kicker ending of Card to Impossible Location. Wonderful effect.

Wayne does a two-person mind-reading effect with a lady, and it is a great piece of comedy. It is a dual-reality effect in the sense that the audience is led to believe the assistant has correctly divined a word thought of. Wayne asks a bunch of questions about the word, and the assistant writes down what he believes. As the audience clearly sees the word written, they get a great deal of laughs as Wayne continues to ask questions about the word. At the last moment, the assitant realizes at the end he has the wrong word, he marks it out (though it is still readable), and he writes the new word and gives the lady the word he wrote down. This cancels out the dual-reality, which is not used as a method, but as a tool for raising the entertainment value.

My Lucky Card was absolutely brilliant. It is a three-phase effect. The first two phases are framed as sort of a full deck memorization effect, but it comes across as feeling like an ACAAN effect. The spectator never chooses a card during the first two phases, but the way Wayne presents it, it does feel like he is revealing the spectator's cards. The spectator then picks his lucky card out of the deck, and it matches the card Wayne has had face down, half pulled out of a card envelope. Stunning. I really love this one. If I would have paid $30 for this alone, it would have been worth it.

His Lightning Matrix is nice, and it is probably a version I would actually try. Beautiful handling and nice cover for when you have to do your move.

Coins to the Glass is a nice presentation for a Coins Across routine. I came up with my own version of Coins Across, but I like the addition of the glass. It adds nice visual and aural elements.

Cap and Pence is a nice effect, though not for me.

Point of Departure is a visual card sandwich effect where the selected card vanishes from between two cards and ends up in the deck reversed.

Wayne's next piece was The Sandwich Trick, which is an Ambitious Card type of effect with the chosen and signed card ending up sandwiched between the two cards used in the previous effect.