Penn & Teller’s professional relationship is almost as old as I am. And yet I can remember a time – probably when their 90s Channel 4 show The Unpleasant World of Penn & Teller broke – when they felt like the future of magic. Their tricks were brasher and more dangerous, their mouthy irreverence a contrast to the genteel discretion of the Paul Daniels generation. But the future doesn’t last for ever. Penn & Teller are enfants terribles no more, and their new show begins with a burlesque on their own decrepitude: an escapology routine in which the trembling twosome break free from dressing gowns and rocking chairs, then spring forth – youthful once more! – to present the rest of the show.
The intention, of course, is to mock the idea that P&T might be past it. And fair enough: the ensuing two hours prove there’s life in the Las Vegas stalwarts yet. But it’s not groundbreaking life. The wheel has turned. Their show – the so-called First Final UK Tour – now feels like a very traditional magic offering, the convention against which today’s upstarts, those latter-day Penn & Tellers, will kick.
The issue, perhaps, is that magic, more than other art forms, is reliant on novelty, surprise and the raising of stakes. It’s a lot, but not always enough, for magicians to come on stage and deliver a succession of excellently orchestrated, usually confounding, tricks – which is what Penn & Teller do tonight. What they don’t do is deliver anything bigger, newer or more surprising than they’ve done on many prior occasions. Which, for magicians, can feel like backsliding. For magicians must outdo themselves, again and again, just to stand still.
What Penn & Teller offer instead is an enjoyable greatest-hits package that includes several new spins on old tricks. You’ll have encountered the Russian roulette stunt before, whether with bullets in guns or nails strategically placed under paper cups. P&T’s innovation is to replace those props with Teller himself, swaddled in foil, and four additional Teller replicas. Here comes Penn with a giant mallet, brought down with force on all but one of the Tellers’ heads. It’s fun, and its accomplishment is a delicious mystery – even if it’s a fairly minimal twist on a trick you’ve seen plenty times before.
Elsewhere, there is novelty, but it’s often attached to routines that can feel disposable. Their front-row stooge may have blanched at Penn & Teller’s sock-clad feet in her face, but for the rest of us, the card trick demonstrating sleight-of-foot rather than sleight-of-hand is easy to enjoy. Again, the set-piece is neat in which Penn misinterprets the Spanish-language instructions on his new trick, leading to some monkey business with an errant ape. But we’re in the realm of amusement here, not astonishment.
Amusement is good, of course – but Penn & Teller themselves have been complicit, over their careers, in the conjuring arms race that requires not just amusement but ratcheting levels of flabbergast. The issue tonight is also one of show construction. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by the likes of Derren Brown, who doesn’t just manipulate his audience trick by trick, but across the dramatic arc of whole shows. I’ve come to expect of my magic sets that some failed trick earlier will be redeemed at the end, or some seed planted in Act One will blossom into something spectacular before curtain call. But it’s not so tonight: Penn & Teller deliver just one routine after another, and end on a dying fall, with Penn Jillette’s paean to the carnival fire-breathers of his Massachusetts youth.
It’s not the first time in a P&T show, nor the first time tonight, that the pair linger in vaudeville nostalgia. An escapology stunt plays out against a backdrop of Houdini performing the same feat. There’s a lecture-demo that places the technique known as the “French drop” in its magic-historical context. Perhaps that’s the spirit in which this classic-style magic show should be received. As they age (if not yet to their rocking-chair and bathrobe dotage), perhaps Penn & Teller’s impulse towards the spectacular and the overreaching fades, to be supplanted by a refreshed appreciation of the simple but confounding craft that drew them to magic in the first place.
It’s understandable to hanker, as an audience member, for some new spin on Teller’s signature stunts, which he performs once again tonight: clipping the petals of a rose’s shadow; swallowing handfuls of needles then disgorging them, threaded. But that shouldn’t diminish our appreciation of the artistry he brings to their execution. Eight thousand performances, in Penn’s estimation, have gone into it: an assiduous honing of craft that was the hallmark of the carnie acts for whom P&T first fell. Not every show has to be the future of comedy; some can just savour its present, and past.
Penn & Teller are at Hammersmith Apollo, London, until 18 June
