August 8th 2009 - David Copperfield finally returns to Australia after some 10 years of not returning to Australia to do a few magic shows for us, and I went!
Here's the basic gist of what happened and just for fun how I think it happened, or didn't happen.
We (Rose and I) got floor seats, my parents got Bronze seats and they found us before we could find them so we lost that "Where's Wally" type game. Come 8pm or so the show starts with a video montage of Copperfield in the media ending with him coming out to our applause.
He started off with a simple cross arm twisting thing that everyone did, I'm sure some of you know the
little trick.
[Anyone can do this]
Next he did a steel plate penetration effect. The basic look of the effect is like a bunk bed, Copperfield lies on the bottom bunk, when the bunk above him is a steel plate that is basically infront of his face by a few cm's. A cloth is spread across the bunk bed and slowly, but surely Copperfield wakes up, going through the steel plate to standing on the steel plate.
[No idea how it's done, but I think Copperfield has the power to go through objects]
The cool thing about the show was Copperfield interaction with the crowd, getting us to clap and walking through the crowd to pick someone to go on stage with him and the next effect was one that required a ring, so of course he picked a girl. Showing a tiny baby shoe he put that into his back pocket after it has been examined by the girl and then took the girl's ring, joked about how cheap it was then made it disappear, only to have it reappear in his tiny little shoe in his back pocket, trapped in the loop of the shoe lace. Untieing the shoe lace, the ring was returned to the girl free of charge.
[Copperfield mucked up the trick the first time, and had to do it again, but I don't think anyone noticed. I know how this one is done, but I'm not telling how, just incase one day I want to do something similar]
The next illusion involved borrowing a shiny red tie from one of the audience members. With hundreds of shows done, there always seems to be someone in the first few rows who happens to wear a shiny red tie. This illusion was a fun one, making the tie dance around on its own, singing along to the song played, putting the tie into a box, having it continue to sing and dance with no one touching it, it was fun to watch. In the end three other ties pop out of a box and sing and dance before jumping out of the box, dying in the process and the shiny red tie is returned to the person who wore it after the song is over.
[I think most people have a good idea how this is done (magical strings), but I just loved how well the tie was being manipulated]
Next was a card trick! Picking two women from the crowd Copperfield pulled out a scorpion in a box and made one of the women hold the box, freaking her out to our amusement. After some teasing, trying to make the other woman touch the scorpion he had her pick a card, lost the card into the deck, had her shuffle the deck and then made a fan with the cards, picked up the scorpion with his barehands and lowered it onto the fan. The scorpion then managed to pick the right card with it's pincers. Quite cool.
[The scorpion was taught very well]
Next was an illusion, one I really liked because it was extremely visual. Getting into a box, with his head, feet and hands the only things you can see Copperfield shrinks himself down so just a head, small box, hands and feet. After which the platform is revolved to show how small he is. A very cool illusion. He then made a joke about John Howard and how short he was but got a "oooooh" reaction from the crowd to which he replied "Thats what they told me to say".
[Copperfield is a robot, that can shrink]
The longest part of the night would be the Grandfather prediction. Telling a story about his grandfather and how he played lotto and wanted a fancy car he attempts to have us predict those numbers, along with two other things. All throughout the night there was a briefcase hanging infront of the stage, which contains those predictions, so now we're about to find out if Copperfield is right.
3 people chose 2 different double digit numbers, resulting in 6 numbers (for lotto), someone was asked to specify a time for when he last was uh..in bed and I think the last person said what colour underwear they were wearing. The briefcase is opened, showing a piece of paper and a tape, playing the tape the numbers are revealed to be correct, the number of hours since was right and the colour of the persons underwear was right. To top that off, two number plates were brought out, which had the lotto numbers on them. Two pedastals were then put in the middle of the stage, people were standing around the pedastal, two people hugged the pedastals and a giant curtain was draped around the top of the pedastals and 5 seconds later it was taken away revealing what probably was the car the grandfather wanted. It was a pretty amazing reveal, seeing a whole car in the middle of the stage.
And just to prove it was real, Copperfield jumped into the car and turned it on.
[Prediction plot can be worked out. Car reveal can be speculated upon but otherwise I have no idea]
At some point he showed a video of one of his escapes, the one where he hangs upsidedown, escaping from a straitjacket held by a burning rope, dangling above flaming spikes. He makes it and escapes.
Throughout the show, one two occasions a duck walks across the stage, interrupting Copperfield as he talks to the crowd. Well, now it was time for the duck to do his trick.
Here's a video of the effect, saving me from explaining it.
I will say that it's cool how the spectator joins in and does the slow motion run too, which always happens. The only difference between this one and the one I saw was the "other" duck "pee'd" on the crowd as he made it's way to the bucket.
[The duck can teleport]
The floating paper/rose was next. And the internet has a video of this too!
When Copperfield started to fold the paper into a rose I was all "Noooo!" because I wanted to do that for Rose, but now she's seen Copperfield do it first. Oh well, I'll still do it anyway, eventually.
[I have an idea how its done, and should learn to do it, and to do it as well as Copperfield]
The fan illusion was something I had read a bit about. I read that someone got injured during the illusion (one of Copperfield's people) so I was interested to see this illusion.
Basically, a giant fan is shown, from side on a platform is on one side. Copperfield walks through the fan, but doesn't appear out the other side. Rather, he decides to appear in the middle of the crowd, on top of a box with fans to blow the amazement around. This illusion made me go "Woah!", mainly because he appeared in the section infront of me so it was pretty close.
I like how a lot of people went to look at the box after the show to see if there was anything but nup, just a normal box with fans.
[Either Copperfield knows inta-teleportation or there was a double involved, you take your pick]
Pretending to finish the show he goes off stage, only to return to do his final illusion, which was awesome. Grey balls are thrown into the crowd, thirteen in total. I was hoping to catch one but didn't get close at all. Some people are seated on the stage to keep an eye on things and the rest are directed to sit on a platform with seats. A curtain is draped around the platform with the people and they are given torches to shine while seated. After shining their torches for a while they all turn off, the curtain is taken away and they are all gone! Copperfield points into the crowd and all those people who disappeared are standing behind the section I'm in waving their torches about. A very magical ending to the show indeed.
[At some point the people disappear and make their way to the back, but how they disappeared I've no clue, so awesome]
Overall it was a good show and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It went for an hour and a half which is pretty good timing, but I would've liked it to go a bit longer. Makes me want to be a magician!
