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Brett Daniels:
Progress Report Reported by Steve Bryant Marvels near
Memphis: Brett Daniels' Magique premieres with 17 new
illusions The
first change I noticed on revisiting Brett's Millennium Theatre were
two large, circular TV screens flanking the stage, video ports if
you will, with pre-show footage of antiquated space ships, a la Flash
Gordon. The video ports would be used later, along with a large screen
on stage, to project Brett's close-up magic. To
introduce 17 new illusions into a show, you have to make a lot of
room, and therefore what has been eliminated is as significant a change
as what has been added. Gone are such Daniels standards as his Visible
Sawing, Disembodied, Interlude, and Table of Death. Brett's "in
one" pieces such as the Newspaper Tear, Linking Rings, Notepad
Card Rise, and his exquisite Billiard Ball routine have vanished.
The Marilyn Monroe illusion and the Floating Ball to Floating Girl
to Asrah illusion that introduced Brett to many of us on the World's
Greatest Magic specials are no longer in the show. If you perceive
that you have already missed some important moments in live magic,
you are correct. Still
in the show are Brett's Atlas Fire Globe production of a girl (and
its smaller counterpart as a Zombie,) a comedic Guillotine segment,
a Jailhouse Rock number in which an incarcerated Brett switches places
with an offensive policeman, a lightning-fast Lamborghini production,
and Shredded (in which a girl's head is removed and the rest of her
body sliced up like bread.) The work with the girl's boxed (and very
alive) head sliding along the base of the illusion is quite baffling.
Brett initially established himself in show business with an act featuring
large birds, and his bird routines still constitute true highlights
of the show. New
features include a mid-stage vanish of a girl in a cape, Sword Suspension,
Walking Through a Girl, Origami with some very nice work on the reproduction
of the girl, and Card on the Seat. Brett gets a strong reaction from
Sands of the Desert, opening the effect by turning "wine"
(a yellow liquid) into "water ... " (an inky black liquid)
" ... from the Mississippi River" (big laugh.) There is
a spectacular motorcycle vanish and reproduction, the latter being
the transformation of a modernistic wire frame version of the bike
into the real thing. There is a completely new Metamorphosis, in which
each facet of the box is characterized by its whirling blades, rendering
passage foolhardy if not impossible. The most talked-about new illusion
in the show is Brett's levitation. It begins normally enough (though
quite sexily) with the levitation of a girl, who is holding a scarf,
including the requisite hoop work. Suddenly she rises to a terrific
height, against a black backdrop. The backdrop raises to show- no
means of support (no forklift), and then descends. From her elevated
position, the girl drops her scarf. Brett retrieves it and then soars
himself to the top of the theater to return it to her. He descends
and walks forward to applause, in only jeans and a tee shirt, nothing
that suggests a hookup. The
televised close-up segment is entirely new, beginning with a one-card-at-a-time
Wild Card (very Ascanioish) and segueing, for the gamblers in the
audience, to RollOver Aces. Brett concludes the segment with a beautifully
executed and daringly traditional rendition of Vernon's Cups and Balls. Brett's
supporting cast aids the show enormously. His dancers constitute the
sexiest chorus line in magic, which Brett acknowledges in various
humorous asides and in one feature number with the girls and a gentleman
used in the guillotine trick The
dramatic highlight of the show, performed on weekends only, is Brett's
Water Torture Escape. The illusion creates considerable tension, partly
because Brett succeeds in making the effect look dangerous, and partly
because the costuming shows off Brett's rather commercial physical
attributes. I am convinced that the young ladies attending the show
with me held their breath throughout the entire piece. Brett's
closer, in both his old show and new, is "Flight," an illusion
sequence that climaxes in the between-your-eyes production of a Navy
fighter jet. In Magique, Brett has nicely expanded the sequence, opening
with Brett himself penetrating through the whirling blades of a large
jet turbine engine. That illusion concludes with Brett's reappearance
in the audience. Next, in a Top Gun moment, Brett vanishes from the
(DeKolta chair) seat of a jet fighter cockpit. The reappearance is
new. A vertical wooden box on legs is wheeled on stage. From the ceiling,
a GI Joe scale action figure descends on a parachute, entering the
top of the box. With appropriate timing, Brett's now human-scale legs
crash through the bottom of the box, the door opens, and Brett emerges.
The audience, rising to applaud Brett for a great show and still ogling
the dancers in their military fatigues, is sufficiently misdirected
to be completely surprised by the appearance of the fighter jet. It's
a grand, ambitious show, with unique magical moments, many on the
large scale of Water Torture Escape, Dual Levitation, or jet production.
But, as Lance Burton has correctly learned on his TV specials, it's
often the smaller moments that count.
One of my young companions, describing the show to someone
else a couple of weeks later said, "He was so good. He had someone
take a card, and he tossed the deck into the air. Then this bird came
swooping down from the back of the theater, and it caught the [selected]
card in its beak!" And she was right. It is a great magical moment,
and a defining one. Like Siegfried and Roy's work with their cats,
it's something you will see nowhere else, and one of many moments
that counsel a visit to the Memphis area, nor just once, but annually. |