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Monday, March 16, 1998

Magicomedy

Penn and Teller's sly humor wows audiences as much as their sleight-of-hand magic tricks

By Kristi Nakamura

Daily Bruin Contributor

The phone rings at 10:30 a.m. A masculine voice introduces himself and casually remarks, "I just got out of the swimming pool and now I'm sitting here naked and dripping - great way to do an interview."

Half an hour later, the phone rings again and another masculine voice mimics a pretend dialogue, "'I've always dreamed of flying.' 'Well good, so have we, now shut up!' 'And if I could fly, this is what it would look like.' 'No it wouldn't, now shut up!'"

No, this is not a bonus from the obscene, schizophrenic phone-callers-of-the-month club. It's just a taste of the quirky, honest and sarcasm-laden humor of the renowned duo, Penn and Teller.

Appearing in Los Angeles for the first time in over seven years, Penn and Teller will play a two-week engagement at the Wilshire Theater. The show runs March 25 through April 5, with one lower-priced preview performance on March 24.

Although Teller is the silent partner on stage, when he does decide to speak he certainly makes just as powerful an impact as Penn. After all, its not every day that a star confesses to being naked and wet on the other end of the phone line. Then again, there isn't much Penn and Teller do that is normal.

When performing, Teller prefers the challenge of lying without speaking and still making the audience jump to the conclusions he wants them to jump to. Penn becomes the sole voice for the duo, lacing the show with his unique brand of insight and cynicism.

"On my own, I don't think I ever would have thought to do the kind of talk Penn does, which is, in its way, wildly political, although it isn't politically topical. He doesn't make White House sexual harassment jokes," says Teller. "It's more broadly political than that. It's a sort of witty, sharp, surprising, it's not even really commentary. It's a very sort of elusive thing to describe, its these sort of explosions that make you think."

Between Penn's politics, Teller's silent lies and the bunny rabbits jumping into chipper shredders, the needle-swallowing, barehanded broken bottle juggling and 1404 pounds of playing cards being manipulated with forklifts to perform the world's heaviest card trick don't seem excessively out of the ordinary.

"Unreassuring is certainly characteristic of our style. I mean, the last TV special we did, we left me dead in the water tank and ended the show," Teller says.

In a similar fashion, Penn and Teller never bring the bunny rabbit back alive after it jumps into the chipper shredder. The audience just has to have faith they didn't actually kill it.

"We just sort of shrug and go 'oh, too bad' and then we move on with the show without ever commenting," Teller says.

There really isn't any clear-cut way to define and classify what it is that Penn and Teller actually do. The Obie award they received while they were on Broadway was addressed "To Penn and Teller, for whatever it's called that they do."

"All I know is it's Penn-and-Teller type stuff," Teller says. "It tends to be stuff that makes you laugh and the little hairs stand up on the back of your neck at the same time."

The duo is adamant, however, about the distinction between the performances they give and other magic shows.

"Whereas other magicians are still following this 'I'll be a greasy guy in a tux with a lot of birds torturing women in front of a mylar curtain while playing a bad rip-off of old McWhiteboy motown music,' which seems to be a valid art form for some, others like us have decided to actually look into the truth," Penn says.

Presenting the thumbnail definition of magicians as actors playing the part of a magician, Penn says that he and Teller prefer to be thought of as swindlers who play swindlers.

The duo admits that 75 to 80 percent of what the audience sees in their show is trickery. They are not out to determinedly conceal the secrets of their magical mysteries.

"The secrets of magic are not kept secret because of some cabal that we all belong to by sacrificing young babies and dancing around bonfires naked. Although we do both of those things, its not an important part of keeping the secret," Penn says. "The secret is kept the same reason the secret to how to grind your pistons in your Volvo is kept secret - you don't care! You want somebody else to do it, find some guy to do it, isn't there a guy who does this?"

Rather than creating elaborate illusions, Penn and Teller are more interested in separating the truth from the nonsense, and who better to address that issue artistically than people whose lives have been spent learning to do deception.

Take Mofo, the psychic gorilla, for example. No illusions here. Teller confesses, "It's probably the cheesiest carnie trick you'll ever see. That's Mofo, Mo-fo, cause you know that's ghetto slang for mother fucker."

Apparently Mofo had an unfortunate accident in the wild 10 years ago and Harvard's medical team picked him up. They chopped off his head, preserved it, gave him the power of speech and now he reads minds for Penn and Teller. Or so the story goes.

In the wake of all these previous theatrical tricks, it only seems appropriate that Penn and Teller conclude their performance with something as flashy as The Bullet Catch, a trick that has claimed the lives of 12 magicians, shot dead on stage.

"We get two audience members up - and incidentally, we're not one of those high-budget shows that bring along their own audience members. We just grab people out of the audience, but we ask for anyone who's conversant with weapons, with specifically handguns," says Teller.

Those audience members are asked to choose a bullet each, mark them, then examine and load the .357 magnum guns. With the audience members safely back in the audience, Penn and Teller walk to opposite ends of the stage, like an old fashioned duel.

Aiming the guns at each other's faces through panes of glass, Penn and Teller shoot at each other through the glass and catch the marked bullets in their teeth.

"People get very nervous during that trick. My mother doesn't like that trick at all," Teller says. "It's kind of a magic trick, but it's also kind of a daredevil stunt and also, frankly, given the current public unease about handguns, it ends up being a very interesting political exploration too."

THEATER: Penn and Teller will perform at the Wilshire Theater, 8440 Wilshire Blvd in Beverly Hills from March 25-April 5. There will also be a preview performance on March 24. Tickets for the preview performance are available for $30 and $35. Tickets for the regular performances range from $32-$42. Call (213) 365-3500.

Penn and Teller come to Wilshire Theater for two weeks starting March 25.

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