David Copperfield - Still the Man!

By Dion Semeniuk

The Team at This is Magic had the pleasure of going to go see David Copperfield live on stage this past week performing his Intimate Night of Grand Illusion. All we can say is, WOW! David Copperfield if the man!

Where do we begin? Oh, how about the beginning of the show, that’s a good place. When you’re David Copperfield, you need to make a grand entrance and that he did. Out of no where, in front of the stage, in the blink of an eye, he appears in the flesh sitting on top of a motorcycle with his trademark looks and smile. From there on we know we are all in for one hell of a night of illusion and entertainment.

What made this show so great was his interaction with the audience. He would routinely throw out frisbees or large inflated balls at random to pick members from the audience to participate in his next effect so you knew nothing was pre-planned.

There were so many great tricks that he did and the comedy to go with it kept the audience in stitches. Who new David Copperfield was so funny? To keep this short we’ll highlight some of the standout routines from the night.

Body Through Steel

He dazzled us with him giving the illusion that he could pass his body right through a thick piece of steel (sort of the same illusion of him walking through the Great Wall of China). Very cool, and no idea of how he pulled that off.

Lottery Number Predictions

This effect had a lot of build up and story behind it. The story being about his grandfather not speaking to him because he wanted to grow up as a magician which his grandfather did not approve of. He did not talk to his grandfather for many years and he ended up passing away. But David remembers doing his first show at 15 years old and thought he saw his grandfather at the back of the room watching but was never sure. When he passed away, they found the ticket stub from that show in his grandfather’s home so he knew he was there to see him succeed. He then described how his grandfather always played the lottery and only owned 2 cars and kept the license plates of them and that he always dreamed of owning a Green Lincoln but never did. So he goes ahead and picks at random members from the audience to pick numbers between 1 and 50 and he sprays paint them on a big sheet on stage and as well asks them to tell them something personal about themselves as well and writes that down as well (there was a lot of comedy into that part as well).

During this whole presentation there was a case hanging above the stage that no one has touched and it was lowered down and opened up by an audience member which revealed a cassette tape and predictions in a bag. Of course, he plays the tape which has him speaking and rattling off the numbers the audience members chose and the papers reveal the personal stuff that the audience had told him.

And last but not least, he revealed the two license plates that his grandfather kept and of course the numbers on them matched the numbers written down as well. And for the kicker ending, he made the Green Lincoln car appear out of no where in seconds on the stage.

Transport Audience Member to Australia

Another grand illusion. In a nutshell, he took an audience member who apparently has not spoken to her father in years who had moved to Australia and wanted to reunite with him. No problem for David. He had someone sign his arm, someone take a picture of the audience members on stage holding a board that had a random picture on it and signed so that they could take that photograph with them to prove they were really in Australia on the beach by the ocean. Away they went into a booth above the audience, and poof, next thing you know they have a live satellite feed showing them on a big screen appearing out of no where showing her running around the beach and into the ocean. She then shows the picture of the audience members they had taken and David shows his arm with the same signature. Unbelievable and we know the writing of this trying to explain what happened does not do this effect justice, you need to see it to believe it. Then David leaves the beach and magically appears in the middle of the audience!

Others

There were many other effects that we won’t touch on in depth but were just as worthy mentioning. Like the duck in barrel routine, very funny. The duck would disappear from a box and reappear in a barrel held by an audience member. Then he would do it in slow motion to show how the trick was done but not really. Another effect was in theory getting a girl pregnant without touching her, another comical routine. Also, having a scorpion pick a card from deck of cards that was the card selected by an audience member. And many others that we could go on and on about.

All we can say is if you ever get a chance to see David Copperfield live, go! You will not regret it as it is worth every penny! We had two standing ovations for him before he left the stage.

Dion Semeniuk is part of the team at This is Magic that continue to follow the current events in the magic community. For free magic tricks, please visit their Magic Trick Store website.