![]() ![]() Is an ideal match for Houdini, whose approach to magic was not dependent on fans and really good hair, but on careful planning and a determination to stand above those he saw as tricksters and frauds who cheated the audience. He's doesn't have Copperfield's ego or sexual charisma, perhaps, and he certainly doesn't have Copperfield's agents, but Watkins' buttoned-down, slightly caustic on-stage personality I once walked into an ordinary children's birthday party and there was Watkins, doing party tricksįor his supper in someone's living room. Frankly, Watkins has never had his just acclaim in the city where he's worked for 10 years. If you've been to a David Copperfield show and watched similar tricks performed at much higher prices a lot further away from your seat, you might find the idea of $25 a revelation. I'm not talking of actors playing around in arty fashion: Watkins is the real technical deal. But the House Theatre of today is a very different beast from the House Theatre of 2001, and what was once a scrappy and original piece of theater is now a highly polished and visually thrilling show that wouldn't be out of place in Las Vegas, and that contains magic of the very highest order. In essence, the show offers a fast-moving biography of Houdini, using his most famous illusions to tell his life story and illustrate his obsession with the cheating of death. This new House production is actually a re-staging of the first-ever production by this distinctive Chicago theater. And this is certainly a show very much in touch with the spirit of the real Houdini. In the punishing, real-life end, of course, Houdini was not so lucky, eventually falling prey, like Cyrano de Bergerac, On Sunday, I'm happy to report, both drowning and blood were averted, according to plan. It's the same scene when Watkins talks a walk on broken glass. The writer-director Nathan Allen stages the show with the audience on two sides, offering each side a simultaneous view of fellow audience members with eyes averted, brows covered with hands, and faces filled with varying stages of amazement and discomfort. To say that the audience is attentive to the events taking places just a few feet in front of them at the Chopin Theatre is an understatement. Watkins does it in sufficiently close proximity that the front rows can feel the splashes. But Houdini did that trick mostly in big, proscenium theaters. The House Theatre's riveting "Death and Harry Houdini," which opened Sunday night at the Chopin Theatre, ends with a detailed re-creation of that very trick, performed by Dennis Watkins, a local actor and magician with an obsessive interest in Houdini and a man who has closely studied his greatest illusions and learned how to do them in homage to the master. Even several minutes into the trick, audiences would be able to steal a view of the submerged Houdini, still under water and beginning to turn blue. The cover would be padlocked after the great escapologist held his breath and, with manacles around his feet, took what seemed to be a fatal dive. "Of all Harry Houdini's great feats of daring, none thrilled audiences as much as the Chinese Water Torture Cell, a transparent, fish tank-like device filled with gallons of water into which the favorite son of Appleton, Wisc., would be lowered, head first. Thereafter, the show moves to the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami"Ĭritic's Choice - Be prepared to be amazed at House Theatre's 'Death and Harry Houdini' - Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune 1/31/12. The show, which stars the illusionist and actor Dennis Watkins, will now play through April 15. "The House Theatre said Sunday that it had sold out its entire scheduled run of "Death and Harry Houdini" within five days of opening and now planned to add another month of shows at the Chopin Theatre in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago. ![]() House sells out 'Houdini' adds shows, preps for Miami - Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune 2/13/12. ![]()
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