No Illusion: He’s Magic

Playing poker with Ricky Jay would be like shooting putt-putt with Jack Nicklaus or trading epigrams with Oscar Wilde. Considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest, sleight-of-hand artists alive today, Jay can deal any hand, any time. Also, he can decapitate a plastic duck by throwing a card at it.

In “Ricky Jay & His 52 Assistants,” Jay deals perfect gin and poker hands, seemingly without looking, and makes us doubt our sight and the nature of reality. This is a giddy yet strangely serious evening, offering an antidote to every frilly-shirted magician whose attempts to dazzle only bore and grate. Performing a virtually sold-out run at the Tiffany Theater, Jay demonstrates that he is not a boaster but a man of quiet, deeply earned confidence. Children are not welcome.

Throughout the performance Saturday night, cries of “No way!” and “Oh, my god!” punctuated each and every one of his tricks. The woman sitting next to me kept saying, “How’d he do that?” in a tone of childlike helplessness. At first, her date tried to supply her with desperate explanations, but soon he was silenced, sitting open-mouthed as Jay dead-cut ace after ace, made queens appear from nowhere or threw an entire deck in the air only to catch the one card he needed. At one point he pulled a marked card not out of the deck from which a woman had drawn and written on it, but out of an entirely new pack just after he had removed the plastic.

Directed by Jay’s friend, playwright David Mamet (who used Jay in three of his films), this show was a sensation when it played off-Broadway two years ago. Mamet has done a superb job of presenting not only Jay’s skill but also conveying the power of the performer’s personality in such a way that we feel we are in a living room, sharing an evening with one of the most compelling characters we will ever meet. Kevin Rigdon’s set, reportedly based on rooms of both Jay and Mamet’s, helps complete the illusion of intimacy.

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A study in opposites, Ricky Jay is kindly but menacing, low-key but intense, arrogant but courtly, a devoted scholar who looks like a Mafia don. His language is formal and picturesque; he relishes stiff phrases like “encouraged by your approbation.” Jay is a riveting storyteller with a passion for magician lore, which he shares here in a cultivated voice still tinged with New Jersey. He tells stories during and in the middle of complicated tricks, sometimes strolling into the audience. He also recites 19th century doggerel.

“If I could go back in time--and I can,” Jay says carefully, and indeed, no one in the audience doubts him. He lovingly relates the exploits of former masters of his art, men with names like Johann Nepomuk Hofzinser, Nate Leipzig, Max Malini, Dai Vernon or George Devol, a 19th century Mississippi riverboat gambler and professional head-butter. From the 18th century, Jay evokes Matthew Buchinger, the Wonderful Little Man of Nuremberg, who grew to be only 29 inches, was born without feet or arms, and had 14 children. Jay quotes devotedly from these men, heroes who practiced the crafts he now so dazzlingly carries forth.

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Jay’s seriousness is one of his most appealing aspects. He is serious even while lunging, pitching cards at a watermelon. The cards pierce the red flesh of a watermelon sliced in half. Then, turning the fruit around, he tries to pierce its “even thicker, pachydermatous layer.” At first the cards glance the skin then fly off in graceful swoops. Even his misses are mesmerizing. Then, of course, he nails it. In ways you’ve never imagined, Jay shows why Hofzinser called cards “the poetry of magic.”

The author of several books, Jay also raises interesting ethical issues about the invisible line between absolute mastery and cheating. He quotes George Bernard Shaw, saying, “Every profession is a conspiracy against the laity.”

Ricky Jay may be the most magnificent and literate conjurer alive, but any theatergoer who can pull tickets out of a hat will also be performing a pretty neat trick.

* “Ricky Jay & His 52 Assistants,” Tiffany Theater, 8532 Sunset Blvd., Wednesday-Saturday, 8 p.m. Sunday, 7:30 p.m. Ends June 2. $50. (310) 289-2999. Sold out, but some house seats will be available daily at the box office at 5 p.m. No one under 17 will be admitted. Running time: 2 hours.

A Silver Pictures Entertainment & Meyer Girls production. Written and performed by Ricky Jay. Directed by David Mamet. Sets Kevin Rigdon. Lighting Jules Fisher. Consultants Jim Steinmeyer, Michael Weber. 53rd assistant David Roth. Production stage manager Matthew Silver.