Last night, my friend Rick Anderson, his son Tevin, and I went to see Marc Salem at the Moore Theater. Marc is a mystery entertainer and more specifically a mentalist. In his presentation he never refers to himself as a "mentalist" though. He simply states that he has studied the human mind for years and more specifically, non-verbal communication.
It was a packed house and I thought it was quite a good act.
Here's a review.
The place goes pitch dark as the mysterious music build to a climax and all of sudden the spotlight goes on shining on Mr. Marc Salem center stage. He says "Just me!" which I thought was cute. After the whole build up of the music which was quite dramatic he simply says "just me!" implying the one man show he's about to do.
He started with some "warm ups" jumping right into getting a two digit number from the audience at random and performing the Magic Number Square. It had a pretty good reaction from the audience.
He continued warming up with a few standard number predictions. You know, "think of a ninto the act.umber between 1 and 100, both digits odd and not the same..." a few of those and it was
off into the act.
He performed a simple version of the "lie detector" plot, wherein five helpers come on stage and get their own sheet of cardboard and a marker. They were asked to draw a simple illustration of something and then mix up all the drawings. This was all done with his back turned to them, there's no way he could have seen anything. He then took one drawing and went down the line of people asking "did you draw this?" They were all instructed to say no, therefore one person would be lying. He managed to divine "based on body language" which people drew which drawings.
Then Marc gave a wooden box with a cube of six different colors on it's sides to an audience member. He turned his back while still on stage and had them put the cube in the box with any color facing upwards and then close the box with the cover. He manged to tell them what color was facing up. He did this with a few other people.
He proceded to do a very basic version of book test wherein a lady brought up her own book and another lady selected one supplied by the theater. It was simple. They both peeked at a few words and he divined what those words were.
Then he had a few people in the audience give him some personal information. A gal was brought on stage to help. She reached inside the zippered compartment of his wallet taking out the sealed envelope. Inside was a letter which she read aloud.
Hi Silvia, Thanks for coming up and helping. Please let everyone know that my lucky number is 764. Tell Josh I hope he had a great trip to Hawaai. Also, I like your red dress.
It was something along those lines... you know how it is.
The next while into the closing was object sensing with the coin and duck tape blindfold bit. Marc is exceptionally experienced in entertaining and really making it seem that he's actually picking up on "signals." Even when you know the secret to this age old secret, you manage to get sucked into thinking "how the hell is this possible?", just by the way Mr. Salem presents it.
He finished with duplicating a drawing of a helper. Pretty convincing!
Overall I was impressed by Marc's show. He really is experienced. His charm, whit, scripting, presentation, and ad libbing with the audience's remarks were the most exceptional parts of the show for me.
As for the actual effects? I felt it was a pretty standard mental act and he didn't do a good enough job selling just how impossible the stuff he's doing really is. Presentations of such greats as Bob Cassidy, Kreskin, etc. are more what I like to see from a mentalist performer. Marc didn't really build up his effects.
All in all it was really a good time and it was interesting for me to see what a mentalists act should and does look like for regular laymen. This was my first time going to see a Mental Act for real people and it was great!
Marc was also a very nice person and he really took the time to speak with me regarding what I do and all that good stuff.
More later...
No comments:
Post a Comment