![]() DEATH and HARRY HOUDINIplays in the intimate Carnival Studio Theater (Ziff Ballet Opera House) from April 26 – as part of the Theater Up Close season. House Company Member and award-winning magician, Dennis Watkins, has joined the cast and is set to perform Houdini’s most renowned and dangerous escape-the dreaded Water Torture Cell-in this dark and tumultuous story guaranteed to keep audiences on the edge of their seats. Written and directed by The House’s Artistic Director Nathan Allen, DEATH and HARRY HOUDINI delivers a roller coaster ride through the life of the great magician, Harry Houdini, and his life-long battle against Death. Call: (305) 949-6722.The Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County proudly presents The House Theatre of Chicago’s critically-acclaimed production of DEATH and HARRY HOUDINI, commended by the Chicago Tribune as “Magic of the very highest order!” This play marks the second House Theatre of Chicago production presented at the Adrienne Arsht Center after last season’s The Sparrow. Then the theatrical experience might have been a satisfying drama with some magic tricks, instead of the other way around.ĭEATH AND HARRY HOUDINI, Arsht Center Carnival Studio Theatre, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami. Nevertheless, it is hard to shake the impression that the play could have gone deeper with its exploration of Houdini and what drove him to risk so much so often. Death and Harry Houdini is the kind of show that requires technical perfection and gets it from House Theatre. Playwright Allen also directs the production, an act of choreography that keeps the cast in near-constant motion and has the audience often holding its breath. Shawn Pfautsch is appealing in the underwritten role of Harry’s little brother, Theo, and Johnny Arena is aptly nefarious as the proceeding’s Ringmaster. ![]() Carolyn Defrin is particularly endearing as Houdini’s wife, Bess, who accepts she will always be less important to her hubby than his sourpuss mother (Marika Mashburn), his magic and his joust with death. Understandably, the rest of the show cannot measure up to the magic, though the cast sings and plays various instruments quite capably. Many of the illusions do rely on specially rigged props that most actors could be taught to master, but during the evening Watkins also excels with playing card manipulation, that barefoot walk across glass shards and the swallowing of several razor blades which he ties together with thread in his mouth. It certainly has them in the charismatic and wily Dennis Watkins, who not only plays Houdini but is credited with designing the magic effects in the show. Although its strength is in its ensemble work, Death and Harry Houdini requires a star presence with very specific sleight-of-hand skills and underwater lung power. Like last season’s The Sparrow, also by House Theatre at the Arsht’s Carnival Studio space, the company again shows itself to be a nimble, young troupe brimming with creativity. The script would have been helped by a more distinct viewpoint on Houdini, but even that would likely have taken a backseat to such deftly performed stunts as the quick-change metamorphosis illusion, a wince-inducing walk across a bed of broken bottle glass and the grand finale - an escape from being shackled and suspended upside down in a water torture tower. Mortality issues are at the forefront of Nathan Allen’s take on Houdini, though they are upstaged by the numerous classic feats of magic that are salted throughout the play. Houdini, the renowned illusionist and escape artist of the early 20th century, became obsessed with the spirit world in the hope of pulling off his greatest trick - escaping death. The magic of theater and magic as theater are at the core of an entertaining, if insubstantial, biodrama, Death and Harry Houdini, created and performed by Chicago’s House Theatre, currently at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami.
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