Katy and I met up with Holly and Lee to go see Penn & Teller in Birmingham. The review is from the Manchester show, but I agree with everything it says.
What these two do is different – it’s iconoclastic, in your face and utterly original. Even when they explained how they did a trick step by step I still didn’t really understand and that’s why it was brilliant. Audience members taking part in some of the tricks looked just as bemused and impressed as the rest of us as they walked off stage thinking ‘..how?’.
Penn Jillette – huge, loud, into fire-eating and sporting a jet black ponytail – does all the talking while 60-odd-year-old former Latin teacher and master of the sleight of hand Teller (he has no first name) is far smaller, more conservative in style and completely silent.
Together- in their matching three-piece suits – they make the perfect comedy magic double-act conjuring up a mixture of laughs and gasps. And they’re up-front about what they do. It’s trickery, short and simple. Highly skilled, wonderfully entertaining, but pure illusion.
Some of the tricks were new, and some old favourites. But for fans like me who’d seen many of these illusions before, each and every one was a complete treat to be witnessing live for the first time. The money in a jar, the double bass and smoker, the shadow flower and the close-up magic video camera were among my favourites.
And then there’s the comedy – genuinely funny, intelligent and often poking fun at themselves. All this is interspersed with Penn’s commentary including his well-known disdain for mediums, psychics and others who claim to have special powers.
In short, what Penn and Teller do is borne of a love of illusion, shows, carnival, skill and spectacle. What it resulted in was a night of brilliant jaw-dropping entertainment that flew by.