Review of the Illusionists

I was always a big fan of magic growing up. I liked the idea of seeing things disappear or have things float in midair. I remembered seeing street magic here and there, and being impressed by little magic tricks. There are some things, which I have no idea how they did it and it boggled my mind. I was sitting in the audience like everyone else and I was sometimes not paying any attention to the little details, but these guys do it so flawlessly and so perfectly, it is hard to believe what I saw. We started off with Adam Trent, who was the one that did most of the close up small magic tricks. Now, keep in mind that I did have a chance to see a bit of the show before coming in as a patron.

Adam Trent kicked the show off with a few simple magic tricks. The first one he did was ask someone from the audience, and he had three envelops one had the guest's phone, the guest chose a random one, and put it in his pocket. Trent then put the other envelopes in an industrial blender and mixed it up. Then he opened a melon with the man's phone inside. I don't get how he did it, but needless to say I was impressed. Magicians often use distractions for when they put the object away, but I could not see any slight of hand in any possible way. This was so impressive I did not know what to think. I have no idea how it was possible and that's what magic is supposed to feel like. He had a guy watch the melon the entire time, so it was next to impossible to see what happened. The next trick that Adam Trent did was not that impressive. Before the show, they asked the audience to put in random objects from their purse to the box that the show provided. Now, I would have been impressed if they used different objects each time, however, when I ushered the show, he used the exact same object. Yet, he the still managed to pull a really neat trick by filling up an empty pop can with coke and I have a feeling there was some slick sleight of hand used and distraction from the audience.

The next act was a daredevil act. He did some very disturbing things. He chose a person from the audience and he asked her to slap him, but before he gave a wooden box to someone in the audience to hold onto for him. With clear instructions not to flip it, open it, or move it in anyway. He wore a pair of handcuffs and the deal was that he had to get out of them in under a minute, and once in a while, a bell would spring and the woman had to slap him. She was then taken off stage and he retrieved the box from the audience member who was holding onto it. Inside was a real-life scorpion. He said being slapped in the face was not enough, so he put the scorpion in his mouth. Yes, that made me gag a bit in my mouth. The woman was brought back onto stage and he proceeded to try and get out of the handcuffs as she slapped him and you could see the sweat dribbling off the daredevil's bald head. The audience would go "ooooh" and "ouch." The woman had no idea the creature was in his mouth; he took off the handcuffs before the fourth or third slap. He then held out the box from and put it near his mouth, took the tape off, and out crawled the scorpion. The woman shrieked because she did not know that was in his mouth. Absolutely impressive. Now, I do not know if the scorpion had no stinger, or he became immune to the venom, but still scorpion legs are sharp and don't forget about the pincers. The daredevil act is probably one of the audiences favorite to see because there are many risks involved, and yet, he still does it for entertainment purposes. It was astonishing the things that this guy did. A lot of training had to happen in order for no mistakes to happen. A slight mistake and the whole thing could have gone terribly wrong. I think the daredevil in my opinion was the most impressive of them all.

Darcy Oakes was as impressive as I had perceived. I had seen him audition on America's Got Talent, and he used the same tricks as he did then. I was honestly expecting a little bit more from him because I wanted to see something else other than what was on TV. So I was slightly disappointed in the act. However, he still pulled birds as if from nowhere, and that's what got me. Then I still had not figured out where his assistant came from at the end of the act. I thought that if I watched closely enough I would be able to see the bird coming from his jacket. But still it was impressive to see the act live rather than on YouTube. If it was my first time seeing the act, it would have been amazing and then I would have been a lot more impressed.

Yo Ho Jin's act was beautiful and stunning. He started off with just a few cards and then, he was pulling card after card. Where does he keep all of them? How does he do it? They just kept coming and they were being thrown on the floor, so they had to come from somewhere right? These tricks were all about where you were looking he had to have some of the cards hidden, so you could not see them. I was thoroughly impressed with this, he was able to manipulate these cards, and it looked like he was pulling them from the air.

Gosh, I wish I knew what the last guy's name was but he was a mind reader. I never really trusted mind readers. Even though he claimed that he did not know the person, I still think on some level they were set up to be there. However, if it was real than that would be pretty impressive because he guessed a random person's birthday.