Magic Trick
Opening Night: August 27, 2015
Closing: September 12, 2015
Theater: Studio Theatre at Theatre Row
A three-hander as surprising as it is sexy, Magic Trick subverts audience expectations we don’t even know we have. Bana, a beautiful paraplegic who everyone falls in love with, is missing. Eric, her (ex?) boyfriend, can’t find her. Clara, that burlesque dancer they almost had a threesome with, gets naked and won’t leave his apartment. And just when he thinks it might all be over, Eric finally finds Bana…on the burlesque stage. Magic Trick is a nonlinear story of heartbreak and burlesque, jumping time in the tradition of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Last Five Years. With characters that are complicated, funny, and above all human, MacCarthy paints a portrait of people figuring out what it means to be in love while also staying true to oneself.
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August 30, 2015
A relationship dramedy set in the world of burlesque, Mariah MacCarthy’s “Magic Trick” lives low to the ground. This is partly by necessity: The play’s main character is a young woman who uses a wheelchair, and much of the action occurs as she and others are sitting or lying down. But in Christina Roussos’s production for Caps Lock Theater, the lack of elevation is an ill-advised choice, too. The hardwood floor of the black-box Studio Theater at Theater Row serves as the stage, and the audience watches from shallow risers that don’t offer a clear perspective. Sometimes a whole person came into view, but in one scene, all I could glimpse was a foot. In another, an upper arm. An entire striptease was lost on me; though the actor was standing, I could see her only from the shoulders up. I didn’t have an especially bad seat, either. At the performance I attended, most of us were craning our necks.
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