On the theater, one needs, or not less than consents, to be fooled. With no prepared suspension of disbelief, theater can’t happen. The viewers is aware of they’re in a constructing with seats, lights, and surroundings, and that the folks on the stage are actors, not really gods or gravediggers, suffragists or salesmen, or regardless of the story they’re telling calls for. However aside from an occasional prologue or epilogue or different breaking of the fourth wall to handle the viewers, the lies advised in theaters usually are not normally the topic of the play.
That is all upended within the new work premiering at Spherical Home Theatre, Nothing Up My Sleeve: Easy Deceptions for Curious People, an intriguing amalgam of magic present and autobiography. This one-man play, created by grasp magician/actor Dendy and playwright/director Aaron Posner, foregrounds the falsehoods and faces head-on what it means for an viewers to be complicit in their very own deception, in hopes, maybe, of showing extra basic truths.
Dendy and Posner first labored collectively on the acclaimed Spherical Home manufacturing of The Tempest in 2022, which was co-directed by the magician Teller and featured stage illusions to emphasise the sorcery within the story. Dendy portrayed the slave-sprite Ariel and helped design and carry out lots of the methods within the present. After this profitable collaboration, he talked about to Posner that he was eager to do a one-man magic present, and Posner, impressed by his expertise and drive, agreed. However since Spherical Home is foremost a theater, it was important that the work additionally inform a narrative. And after a lot workshopping, the duo decided that the story needs to be Dendy’s personal — how he turned a magician.
So Nothing Up My Sleeve, whereas coyly refusing to reply the query that burns in everybody’s thoughts —How do you DO that?! — touchingly solutions a maybe extra significant one — WHY do you do this?
Dendy, because it seems, is a really compelling and charming star for a one-man present. He’s small, lithe, and humorous — one may name him “puckish” if the position he’s most identified for weren’t Ariel as a substitute. He spends the primary act recreating magic acts from his early years, full with accents, from his 6-year-old lisp to the lonely adolescent determined to make mates in varied new colleges to the faux French accent he adopted on the high-falutin’ Missouri restaurant the place he prestidigitized his approach into his first paying magician gig. There’s a lot broad humor together with the deft card, coin, and ball sleight-of-hand. However alongside the best way, his fine-tuned appearing permits him to delve into deeper moments of emotion, from his interactions along with his father to the devastating second when a “mind-reading” trick precipitated emotional ache to a patron, and drove Dendy away from magic for years.
Fortuitously, one may even say magically, an opportunity assembly with a relation of certainly one of his idols rekindled his id as a magician. The second half of the present options not a lot connections with Dendy’s personal previous, however connections with the generations of magicians who’ve come earlier than — the custom of passing illusions down hand-to-hand from earlier magical luminaries, with every conjurer in succession including his personal private aptitude. Teller, historically the silent companion within the well-known duo Penn and Teller, right here submits a video testimony of how he handed alongside a specific trick that originated from Houdini himself. This wealthy magic heritage is mirrored in Daniel Conway’s charming scenic and projection design, which pays homage to music corridor and vaudeville theaters, wealthy with Edison lights, velvet curtains, dusty trunks, prime hats, and bentwood chairs. Photographs of previous impresarios seem on scrims in entrance of trinket-filled cubbies across the stage, and a big tilted display screen middle stage presents footage of Dendy in his childhood magic acts, or jaw-dropping closeups of the sleight-of-hand he performs with playing cards and cash.
Your entire present shimmers with pleasant thriller. As magicians historically do, Dendy skillfully employs potential failures to intensify the suspense and perceived problem of his methods. His appearing is so good that some viewers members may effectively be not sure whether or not the errors are actual or scripted — all a part of the large, fuzzy border between lies and fact that includes the core of the present.
As with all magic exhibits, viewers participation is vital. (Viewers who can be enchanted to be drawn up on stage ought to attempt to e-book seats within the first few rows or close to the aisle.) In interacting with patrons reside, Dendy exhibits not solely ability at prestidigitation, however a deft hand at standup comedy. One factor that’s by no means doubtful is that with out Dendy’s unequaled expertise at magic, comedy, and appearing, Nothing Up My Sleeve wouldn’t exist. There is no such thing as a understudy listed, and there could possibly be none. Your entire efficiency floats on his slender shoulders.
For essentially the most half, he avoids the large-scale dramatic thrives that some well-known magicians make use of. Nobody right here will get sawn in half. His perspective towards his materials is nearly all the time affectionate and humorous. At one level, he even confines his methods to the perspective of 1 patron on stage, whereas letting the remainder of the viewers in on (one tiny trace of) how they’re carried out. There’s all the time a tacit acknowledgement that, sure, these are illusions, and though Dendy won’t ever break the code and reveal how they work, everyone knows we’re being willingly hoodwinked.
The one a part of the present that departs in any respect from this simple, comedian method is a specific phantasm inherited from Houdini that resembles a sword-swallowing trick in miniature. Whereas seemingly swallowing bundles of needles, Dendy causes unease by displaying discomfort … after which breaks right into a beautific smile, to indicate that even attainable ache is a part of the phantasm we’ve all agreed to partake in. The impact might be disconcerting, briefly elevating the query of whether or not watching somebody undergo is acceptable leisure — particularly if there’s an opportunity it’s actual. However after all, the purpose is that that is all theater, all phantasm, and the catharsis of watching others in ache has been integral to theater since its beginning.
However general, what Dendy conveys by means of his magic and his story is sheer pleasure and connection. He factors out that with out an viewers, magic doesn’t exist; it’s a partnership based mostly on mutual belief, even when depending on deception. All through his life, magic has been a approach for this younger man to succeed in out and contact others, to bridge gaps, to like and be beloved. And there, beneath the lies, lies the final word fact of magic.
Nothing Up My Sleeve is unique, pleasant, and mesmerizing. Catch it earlier than it disappears.
Working Time: Two hours, with one intermission.
Nothing Up My Sleeve: Easy Deceptions for Curious People performs by means of March 15, 2026, at Spherical Home Theatre, 4545 East-West Freeway, Bethesda, MD. Performances are Tuesday by means of Friday at 7:30 PM, Saturday at 8:00 PM, and Saturday and Sunday at 2:00 PM. Tickets begin at $50 with ticket reductions accessible. Buy tickets by calling 240.644.1100, ordering on-line, visiting the field workplace, or by means of TodayTix.
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Nothing Up My Sleeve
By Aaron Posner & Dendy
Magic by Dendy
Directed by Aaron Posner
