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Jamie Allan could teach a master class in magic performance as emotional engagement. His superb show, “Amaze,” features world-class illusions performed by a guy who has been perfecting them for his whole professional life, and everything he does on stage is rooted in personal storytelling, focused on his love for his parents and the richness of his childhood memories.
The result is the kind of rare magic show where you can see (as I did on Sunday night) a father and son move their chairs a little closer together as a consequence of what they were experiencing through each other’s eyes. “Amaze” certainly has a marketing hook, but Allan’s artistic center is really no different from that of, say, Stephen Sondheim or Tony Kushner. Everything, he reveals in trick after trick, is both connected to the past and forever in its debt.
Allan has been to Chicago before. Indeed, some of the illusions in the show, now situated for a holiday run at the Rhapsody Theater in Rogers Park, were performed by Allan at the Harris Theater, a huge downtown venue where I sat among what looked like a sold-out crowd in 2018, a whole different era when it comes to live entertainment in Chicago.
Back then, Allan’s show was called “iMagic,” reflecting his interest in using Apple products as the loci of his magic (including both iPads and the phones of volunteers from the audience). I mostly enjoyed myself.
No disrespect to the Harris, but the show at the Rhapsody is so much better, not least because the intimate venue seems to have freed Allan from the need to fill the space with huge illusions, which is not where his heart lies. In such a space, he can focus more on the audience’s collective heart, spinning stories of his show-business parents, trying to redirect his audience not so much away from his sleight of hand but toward what really matters. I was sent right back inside my childhood and I’d say that was true of most folks in the room.
Beyond the venue, which looks better than I ever have seen it before thanks to Allan’s rich technical set, the magician himself now comes with an unplugged sensibility and an uncommon warmth and openness amid all the deception, for which he apologizes. Time and again, he tells his audience just to relax and enjoy themselves with their partner, friend or family member, rather than spend the night trying to guess how he does all of his routines. (You won’t find it easy, even if you’re a veteran of such shows.) This is audience-centered, narrative-based magic, clearly the result of a long career on the international road (Allan is British and his assistant is his wife, Natalie), and a newfound determination to paddle one’s own canoe and cut away the extraneous. His parents are no longer alive and I suspect that was a major catalyst, too.
Earlier in his career, Allan was a well-known TV personality in the U.K., a regular on holiday specials and the like. He flicks at that and you sense his gratitude but he’s surely now doing deeper work, anticipating the needs of his audience as very few in his profession can do, and exploring how a magic show can cover up the losses present in all of our lives. But he still has all of the old polish and technique (his explosive finale is just fabulous) and plenty of interactive technology. And, as you surely know, people love to be able to take out their phones for a moment.
Once they are turned off again, this becomes a luminous way to spend an evening with someone you love and a show that goes far beyond just another magician in one of Chicago’s growing inventory of magic rooms. You’ll get your own table, most likely, and drinks are served.
“Amaze” will amaze you, I feel sure, albeit not entirely in the way you might expect.
Theater Loop
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Review: “Amaze” (4 stars)
When: Through Jan. 7
Where: Rhapsody Theater, 1328 W. Morse Ave.
Running time: 2 hours
Tickets: $30-$100 at rhapsodytheater.com