Smoke and Mirrors: a Play with a Magic Show up Its Sleeve

1/21/15 - By Roberta B

Not every play that we bring kids to needs to be a children's show. Just last week I brought my son to see the legendary Angela Lansbury in Blithe Spirit (partly because Ahmanson Hot Tix are cheaper than a babysitter), and he giggled himself blue in the face. And when Cirque du Soleil comes to town, it ain't cheap but a whole family can love it together. Fairy tales, puppets, and sing-alongs definitely have their place, but it can be a wonderful thing to find a play that the entire family can enjoy on different levels. Such a show is Smoke and Mirrors at The Odyssey, in which a master magician tells his personal story and performs some top-notch magic along the way.

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Smoke and Mirrors doesn't specifically target children but rather welcomes them as part of a broad audience - so I'll start with the disclaimers. An autobiographical piece by magician Albie Selznick, the play explores how Selznick used magic to cope with the loss of his father at a young age. The father's death is a constant theme, referred to throughout and contemplated on many levels, as the boy Albie learns of his death, misses him, imagines that he's still alive, and wonders where he is in turn. Our kids, six and eleven, were not disturbed by the references to death, but I can imagine that a child who had recently experienced a loss very well might be.

As part of his process, Albie works on putting all of his fears in a magical box - a lovely effect, though one that is moderately spooky in the execution each time a fear is stowed away. There are moments when his fears take forms that look pretty scary before he conquers them, with special effects that drive the point home. Again, neither of our kids was disturbed, but a child sensitive to spooky sounds, loud noises, or skeletons, for example, might be uncomfortable.

Disclaimers aside, everyone involved in the production was clearly delighted to have children in the house. The pre-show, not surprisingly, features a Magic Castle close-up magician playing the crowd, and when he spots kids' ears to pull things out of, it's a match made in heaven. The play itself is 90 minutes long without interval, but kids rarely have to wait more than five or ten minutes for the next magic trick to illustrate an anecdote. Whether or not kids are engrossed by Selznick's personal journey, they are charmed by the doves that spring forth without warning, the objects he makes appear and disappear, and the cards he could not possible know but does. One of the highlights of the show is a giant mind-reading oracle globe that plucks thoughts from the heads of audience members - our kids loved that.

Predominantly a one-man show, the play's story and magical effects are occasionally assisted by other performers, who include a giant rabbit and the spirit of Bess Houdini. Interaction with the audience is frequent, and children are made much of. There is one piece of kid-inappropriate language used late in the play, but Selznick - seemingly intentionally - garbled the word so effectively that it sailed right over the heads of our kids.

The theater lists the age for Smoke and Mirrors as six and up, but I'm more comfortable recommending eight and up. We had no regrets about bringing a six-year-old to see it, but I suspect that for many kids under the age of eight this show would either be a little too scary or a little too long (90 minutes without intermission). If you have a particularly precocious six or seven-year-old who adores magic, though, he's likely to thoroughly enjoy the show without regard to length or spookiness. Our kids continued talking about it for days afterward.

Performances of Smoke and Mirrors are Thursday through Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons at The Odyssey in West LA; tickets cost $34.

 

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