Word: jayed
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...surface, the piece is a magic show. Jay has audience members take a card and place it back in the deck so that he can then locate it. Jay cuts the deck to an ace (repeatedly). Jay even pulls out reputedly the oldest of magician’s tools—the cup and balls. Yet Ricky Jay & His 52 Assistants is far more than a magic show, it is a theatrical experience blessed with wit and genuine charm. Jay sets the tone early as, after he cuts an ace for the first time, he drolly deadpans...
...manipulating a deck of playing cards. At one point, having dealt an audience member two pair, he asks what card he might like drawn next from the deck. The audience member, already wowed by Jay’s abilities and sure a full house is coming, shrugs and tells Jay that whichever of the already paired cards he had planned to give him was okay. Jay retorts, with the perfect air of mock indignation, “I wouldn’t have asked if I couldn’t have given you either...
...Wouldn’t it be great if I could cut a three?” He remarks matter-of-factly, “I can,” as he does precisely that. Soon after the show begins, the audience is convinced there is nothing Jay can’t do with a deck of cards. Jay proves that in an inspired second-act sequence in which he treats a deck of playing cards as deadly weapons to assault a wall, a plastic duck and, in a moment of delightfully frenzied lunacy, a watermelon...
...though, that Jay paces the stage when delivering a story, there is something which is his own—a certain weight, almost sadness, which comes with the recognition that he is among the last of a dying breed. In one moment of seemingly innocuous levity, he turns to an audience member and explains, “So I have to ask you to take a card. That’s all I do... in life.” In Jay’s pause there is more than good comic timing—there is the burden of truth...
...occasion, Jay even wonders what it would be like not to find the cards that audience members selected. However, he quickly comes around and, with a wry twinkle, dismisses the idea: “Just a thought,” he quips. Jay is simply too talented, both with his hands and with his words, to stop performing. Even if he doesn’t inspire the next world-famous sleight-of-hand artist, he has too many stories, too many tricks not to share them...