Word: cardini
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...tricks, only "effects"; a disappearing object was a "vanish"; a suddenly appearing object was a "production"; a nimble-handed move was a "sleight." The masters of all these effects and sleights had vanished. Houdini, who could get out of a steel coffin, could not escape from his wooden one; Cardini, who commanded the attention of a jammed theater with nothing but a deck of cards and a pack of cigarettes; Thurston, Dunninger, Blackstone, Dante: all, all were gone or retired. People wanted facts, not illusions; it was the age of the scientist, not the alchemist...
Life in Tijuana has moved in cycles. During the Prohibition era, the Baja California town glittered as a south-of-the-border oasis for thirsty Hollywood movie stars and horseplayers at Agua Caliente Racetrack; Alex and Caesar Cardini invented Caesar salad one evening to feed the throngs at their beleaguered restaurant. But by World War II, U.S. servicemen in California came to know Tijuana as a bawdy border appendage of San Diego where sidewalk hustlers peddled a startling variety of sexual activities and mainstreet bars offered grinding nudes within tactile distance of the audience. The town's foul...
...dancer Lydia Lopokova). The peer and the peeress sang the words for the delegates near them.' Money vanished: while delegates up stairs in the Mt. Washington Hotel tried to conjure up world money, downstairs in a little bar (with a small orchestra and drinks at $1 a throw), Cardini the Magician made money disappear in his long fingers...
...prologue opens the activities in good fashion by devoting itself exclusively to Cardini's skillful and amusing conjury. During this demonstration Cardini, in answering questions from the audience informs a young lady that her impending-marriage will not take place. The play opens and we learn to our utter amazement that he was right and that the lady's spouse has been murdered. Things then get very complicated and in a twinkling everybody is under suspicion. Cardini is called in to clear up the mess and after confusing the issue impossibly for two acts he brings the story...
Monday's opening performance was none too smooth but with a bit more practise Cardini should get his lines in hand and then the play can settle down to meet its fate. If you can satisfy yourself with Cardini's tricks you will have a good bit of diversion...