Broadway review by Adam Feldman
People come and go so quickly here! The young Spanish magician Antonio Díaz shares many grand illusions in his Broadway show, El Mago Pop, but he is especially keen on teleportation. Díaz and his assistants are in continual states of flux: Now you see them, now you don’t, now you see them again but somewhere other than where they began. A variety of inanimate objects—ranging in size from small (coins) to medium (shoes) to extra large (a helicopter)—are subject to similar vanishing acts, and the entire show will disappear from the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on August 27 so that Diáz can return to his home base in Barcelona.
If you can catch El Mago Pop during its too-brief run, you will be well entertained. Between his more spectacular setpieces, the winsome Díaz—a compact cutie who is billed as Spain’s top-selling artist of the past five years—proves his bona fides with dextrous ventures into card and ball manipulation. (Time-filling video sequences depict him in comic-book graphics, like a modern-day superhero.) A few of the tricks will be familiar to magic fans, but Díaz puts a clever spins on some of the more familiar routines: a standard torn-newspaper bit is subsumed into a larger sequence that takes you aback, and a moment of quasi-levitation is berthed in elegant shadow play. Broadway hasn’t hosted a magic show since before the pandemic shutdown, and it’s good to have some illusions again. For 75 delightful minutes, you may feel a little transported yourself.
El Mago Pop. Ethel Barrymore Theatre (Broadway). By Antonio Díaz. Directed by Mag Lari. With Díaz. Running time: 1hr 15mins. No intermission.
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El Mago Pop | Photograph: Courtesy Emilio Madrid
