Natalie’s (Natalia Love, right) camera shows the audience that Jamie Allan’s (left) card moves are free from deceit. This photograph and banner photo by Danny Kaan.
Anyone searching for a rabbit-out-of-hat show in which a master magician saws a femme fatale in half or makes her disappear should look elsewhere than Jamie Allan’s Amaze. Allan’s show has some dazzling glitter and glitz, but underneath it all there is a moving story that director Jonathan Goodwin has deftly and incrementally integrated with Allan’s sleight-of-hand illusions and interactions with his audience.
Allan is a master magician, but what is compelling about Amaze is less his abundant skills than the way he acquired them and his parents’ role in supporting him. Natalia Love and Natalie Gerene, dressed for most of the show like mod rockers dancing in synchrony, assist him. Justin Gentry, the illusion manager, is more of a straight man, but together with this ensemble of actors, dancer, and storytellers, Allan’s history goes back and forth from his early childhood in the 1980s, to his teen fascination with magic and “witchcraft,” to his performance-centered incorporation of adults and children into his act. Although Love, Gerene and Gentry remain “minor” players, they are critical to moving the narrative and the illusions along.
Allan attempts to find the missing piece to the puzzle. Photograph by Clare Nordbruch.
Allan’s globe-trotting parents—his father a musician, his mother a singer—finally return to England for the sake of their son’s education. His father buys a pub near Stratford-upon-Avon, where his mother, Kay Kennedy, sings and where Allan performs magic tricks. While accompanying his mom to a local antiques shop, Allan purchases a book on magic and subsequently discovers an entire cabinet of magician paraphernalia. This “haul” is central to the story, because its previous owner, a Mr. Pickford (aka Martin Noble), whom Allan knew, was a great magician, a protégé of an even more famous one. Thus, Allan’s career as a magician is launched, but the illusions are tempered with interludes of deep reflection—Allan, sitting on a box next to his father’s trunk, recalls his parents with deep love and reminisces about the Fisher Price magic box they gave him decades earlier.
Amaze’s technical effects are extraordinary, beginning with a huge 1984 sign (Allan’s birth year) displayed high above the stage. Monitors, mounted on either side of the proscenium, project black-and-white 1980s footage, while songs of that decade reverberate through the speakers. At center stage there is a boxed, framed screen that, at intervals during the performance, repeatedly cycles footage of Allan playing with the Fisher Price magic box. His narrative of childhood memories—those of his father’s Betamax and his mother’s enduring love, are quite poignant.
The props enhance his story’s resonance. When Allan sits next to the trunk that bears his mother’s name, or removes a cloth covering her portrait, or picks a toy out of a cardboard box, it is quite moving. Some of the illusions, as outlandish and engineered as they initially seem, are breathtaking and awesome. When he levitates the woman dressed as his mother or reveals the motorcycle that his father lost to his uncle in a wager, the apparitions go beyond mere conjurer’s tricks. They are seamless and fundamental to the story.
Allan beams as he recovers his father’s beloved motorcycle. Photograph by Danny Kaan.
Praise is due to the ensemble of creatives who have made Amaze possible. The cumulative impact of superb lighting, video, audio, and scenic design, coupled with the special effects of the Illusion Fabrication, provide the “dazzle” that underpins Allan’s dramatic storyline. Although “The Natalies,” as Allan calls his assistants, play supporting roles in Amaze, their costumes, by Ingenious Design UK, are less ornamental, more functional, less sexualized, and more empowering than those worn by typical “assistants” in magic shows or by female circus performers. Allan himself is garbed in basic black, but he is surrounded by color and light.
Part of Amaze’s uniqueness and appeal is that Allan seems less egocentric than other performers in this genre. Aside from revering his departed parents and involving diverse audiences in the show, Allan exudes gratitude to other illusionists and magicians of influence—not only Noble and Pickford, vivid figures from his childhood, but mentors Penn and Teller and the more contemporary David Copperfield. Amaze, at the intersection of memory, illusion, cutting-edge technology, and showmanship, is a successful confluence of them all.
Amaze runs at New World Stages (340 West 50th St.) through Sept. 7. Evening performances are Wednesdays through Mondays at 7 p.m.; matinees are at 3 p.m. on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. For more information, or to purchase tickets, call (212) 239-6200 or visit amazemagic.com.
Creators: Jamie Allan, Tommy Bond
Director: Jonathan Goodwin
Set Designer: Damien Stanton
Lighting: Sean Gleason
Video: Daniel Rintjima
Audio & Sound Design: Ryan Borshuk
Costume Design: Ingenious Design UK
Illusion Fabrication: Adam Topham, Greg Frewin, Willie Kennedy
