"HOW’S TRICKS?"

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23317, 1 May 1941, Page 5

"HOW’S TRICKS?"

♦ LEYANTE’S BRILLIANT ILLUSIONS MYSTERY AND REVUE The public loves to be mystified, as the vogue of the detective story shows. Wizards, illusionists, masters of magic are, it goes without saying, among the most popular of entertainers, and a full house welcomed the “Great Levante” and his company when they opened their Christchurch season. Levante, tall, handsome, suave, with nothing of the conventional diabolic in his personal appearance or his dress, did the impossible with a brazen effrontery and a matter-of-factness that was in perfect accord with the breezy title of his show, “How’s Tricks?” Altogether it was an absorbing entertainment, not only because of Levan te’s masterly presentation of a great variety of tricks, many of them new and some of them old, but given fresh interest by new methods of presentation; but because, his supporting artists fully justify the company’s promise to present a complete revue. Among these must be mentioned the dancing of Miss Esme Levante with her Oriental maidens, the acrobatics of Rex and Bessie, the really brilliant "shadowgraph" of Melba, and the singing of Miss Ursula Irving. Levante himself caused rabbits, ducks, canaries, eggs, and pretty girls to appear and to dematerialise m all sorts of possible and impossible places. But that was mere routine. The really spectacular tricks included the shooting of a “human projectile,” enclosed m a shell-case, through an apparently solid sheet of steel, the shooting of a dart, with its trail of ribbon, through the body o£ a girl, the guillotining of another, and the transfixing of another on a heavy bar of steel. •

In a flicker of an eyelash he changed places with his daughter, who had just been padlocked and strapped Into a heavy Iron box; almost as quickly he changed coats with a member of the audience in spite of the slight disability of being securely trussed to a chair. He produced from his magic three-pint kettle not only eight or nine pints of beer, but considerable quantities of whisky, port, gin, liqueurs, and even milk. Thirsty members of the audience, who received the brimming glasses of liquor, agreed that this was magic really worth while. Compared with this it was child’s play to produce from a canister some three or four times the .vessel’s cubic content of first sugar and then sand, to tip them into another canister, and to make the contents disappear into thin air. One of his cleverest acts was a conversation with a gramophone record. From the wax came the voice of someone who not only appeared to be fully informed of what was going on in the theatre, but was able to predict in advance what cards would be chosen from the pack by members of the audience. The programme will be presented nightly and on Saturday and Wednesday afternoons.