From the Chicago Reader’s Short List of Highly Recommended Shows:

There’s no Vegas-style razzmatazz in this charming weekly performance of “parlor magic” — both David Parr and P.T. Murphy have rather donnish personas. But they’re enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the history of magic Chicago style (they include shout-outs to Matt Schulien), and they perform astounding feats of prestidigitation. Low on hokum and high on thoughtfulness, this is an evening that shows magic to its best advantage, up close and personal.

– Kerry Reid, Chicago Reader Theater Critic

From Centerstage Chicago’s list of Must-See Theater:

No glitz, just wonder. The Magic Cabaret draws on a century-old tradition of “parlor magic,” an intimate style of prestidigitation that keeps the audience directly involved. Instead of watching tigers become showgirls across a massive auditorium, the lucky viewers at this show will watch the simply impossible happen in front of their noses.

– Reina Hardy, Centerstage Chicago Theater Critic

From the Daily Herald’s Theater Features Section:

The trick had failed. Or so it seemed. The volunteer who magician David Parr had selected from the audience seemed hesitant when he quizzed her about the card he had asked her to imagine.

The young woman, with a shock of fluorescent color in her hair and flip-flops on her feet, hesitated. She fidgeted. It took ages for her to respond. Everybody figured the trick was ruined. Even Parr’s fellow magician and Magic Cabaret co-star P.T. Murphy worried the volunteer had blown it.

The tension mounted. Finally the girl stammered out the name of her imaginary card. Cool-as-a-cucumber, Parr strolled to the stage where she sat. He took from her hands the sealed deck, fanned out the cards and pulled from them the one she had named, inscribed with a big black X.

Like the tightrope walker who stumbles to heighten suspense, the savvy showman played to the crowd. And made magic — parlor magic.

An intimate style of legerdemain dating back to the late 19th and early 20th century, parlor magic (also known as club or cabaret magic) falls between close-up or table-top magic and its more elaborate stage version. The nattily attired Murphy and Parr are old school. Their charming and entertaining Magic Cabaret — sleight of hand with a supernatural twist — consists of card tricks and classics like “cups and balls.”

“I believe in magic,” confesses Murphy at the start of the show. “I imagine the impossible and make believe it is possible.

“My job as a magician is to ask the question: what if?” he says.

Magic is about the possibility that ropes can grow and shrink, that a playful spirit can toss around a ball or stack blocks, that one person can read the mind of another.

Mostly, it reflects “that we can still be surprised,” says Parr, “that we don’t know everything, that we haven’t discovered everything. It symbolizes the larger mysteries.”

Magic enchanted Murphy and Parr when they were children. Eventually it became their career.

“It’s deep enough that it’s able to grow with you as you grow older,” says Murphy, who, like Parr, began performing as a teenager, palming nickels and other objects as a way of entertaining family and friends.

Since turning pro, each has performed professionally in Chicago and elsewhere. Both have a theater background (Murphy has performed with Shattered Globe, Northlight and Irish Repertory theaters), which is reflected in their storytelling and the show’s narrative arc.

After all this time Parr, the author of several books and articles on magic, remains under its spell.

“It’s how I find joy in my life,” he says.

He and Murphy decided to collaborate on an homage to what Murphy describes as “magic in its purest form.”

“We’re the opposite of everyone,” says Murphy. “We’re up-close.”

TV and Las Vegas-style spectacles may dazzle audiences, but parlor magic has an appeal all its own. A lot of it has to do with immediacy. It may be small in scale, but parlor magic still has the capacity to astonish.

“I want people to take home that feeling of surprise,” says Parr . “That’s so important, and you can’t get it from a TV screen.

“It’s one thing to be a passive observer,” he says, “but when the mystery and the magic is happening in a room… You’re part of it and it’s part of you.”

Both admit to being fooled by creative magicians who not only re-animate their sense of mystery and wonder, but inspire them to create something mysterious and wonderful themselves.

And if they stumble in the process, the conclusion is never really in doubt. Like Parr says, magicians always have an escape route.

“You can tell the pros by how well they cover their mistakes,” he says with a smile.

“And how hard they work to never let it happen again,” interjects Murphy, laughing.

Good magicians are deft technicians. Great magicians are deft technicians with the soul of an artist. Those magicians elevate magic beyond mere tricks to art.

Treading the tightrope between illusion and reality, Murphy and Parr make art of magic.

– Barbara Vitello, Daily Herald Critic At Large