After 11 years, McBride is still the best magician ever to play Atlantic City. Such big-top tricksters as David Copperfield and Doug Henning can't hold a wand to McBride's athleticism and the astonishing simplicity of his illusions.
Only McBride can hold an audience breathless by suspending two small, fluttering pieces of paper in space. There's no trick to this - McBride merely waves an Oriental hand fan beneath them, and air pressure does the work. He makes no attempt to hide or disguise the fan. By imagination - and not by magic - the papers become butterflies.
What makes this, his impressive card tricks and the charming set-piece with bowls that magically fill with raindrops so captivating is McBride's skill at appealing to our childlike sense of wonder. Though his current 75-minute performance at Showboat's Mardi Gras lounge has some uncharacteristic slow moments, it is still the strangest brew of tricks in town: a weird, mystical mix of mime, theater, drumming, Kabuki, martial arts and old-fashioned sleight-of-hand presented without McBride uttering a single word. It is only when McBride picks up a microphone that the show loses its zip.
Traditional magicians use "patter," spoken commentary, to introduce tricks. Harry Blackstone, who will play Trump Plaza for Thanksgiving weekend, is the acknowledged master of the murky monologue.
When McBride announces that his act is based on a multicultural collection of myths, rituals and movements, and then follows this with obvious hokum about "sexual alchemy" to introduce a belly dancer named Jihan, he undermines the beauty of his performance. When you see McBride literally lose his face, and then become possessed by an evil mask that conspires to control his movements and deprive him of his freedom, you don't need, or want, color commentary. This, and other fabulous theatrical segments, speak for themselves.
