The golden age of magic was recreated when The Illusionists 1903 opened at the Canberra Theatre on Tuesday night.
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Levitation, disappearance and reappearance and clairvoyance were just some of the acts presented by a group of international performers specialising in visual, mental and optical illusion.
Among them were husband and wife Mark Kalin ("The Showman") and Jinger Leigh ("The Conjuress") who perform several acts in the show including the bullet catch, in which she fires a bullet marked by an audience member and he catches it in his teeth.
Kalin said, "12 magicians have died while performing that trick ... I'm trying not to be number 13."
"That would be very unlucky," Leigh added.
One of the genuine fatalities, he said, was the magician Chung Ling Soo, who was fatally shot while performing the bullet catch in 1918 – and his public was shocked to learn after his death that he was not Chinese, as he appeared from his looks and dress, but an American named William Robinson.
Kalin said this show – the third Illusionists production and the first to evoke the past – has 1903 in its title because that came in the middle of "the Golden Age of Magic ...a period of 20 or 25 years from the late 1800s to 1920-21".
It was, he said, a time when the industrial age was in full swing and big theatres were built in cities that enabled magicians to add new and bigger elements to their shows.
"While singers still sang songs and jugglers still juggled, magicians had a new playing field," he said.
"They were the rock stars of their day."
Some of the illusions in the show are performed as they were originally including P.T. Selbit's sawing a woman in half trick, which premiered in 1921. Originally the assistant was to be a man, Kalin said, but Selbit decided to draw on the attention raised by the suffragette movement by using a woman instead.
"It caused a sensation and was copied by other magicians and became the most famous illusion of all time."
Leigh said she was originally a dancer – she began her professional career at the age of 15 – and met Kalin while working in Guam 24 years ago. They have been married for 21 years, are based in Reno, Nevada, and work all around the world – including all the Illusionist shows in Australia.
She said while she had never lost her passion for dancing, she enjoyed magic, particularly the psychological element of learning how to present an illusion. In 1998 the couple were awarded Magicians of the Year from The Academy of Magical Arts.
The Illusionists 1903 is on at the Canberra Theatre until December 16. Bookings: canberratheatrecentre.com.au or 62752700.
