Six Impossible Things

Joshua Jay is an affable fellow, and his immersive and intimate show has a hip vibe: He performs it for groups of 20 in adjoining rooms of a small Chinatown basement space spruced up with retro decor and nifty murals by Serge Block. It's easy to see why the show has been popular. (Its current run is sold out, and it will return in the fall.) But although Jay is an smooth performer and a gifted sleight-of-hand artist—he has written a primer for aspiring magicians—the show's atmospherics are more memorable than its illusions; several of the effects rely too obviously on trick equipment rather than skill. Maybe that’s why audiences are explicitly forbidden from seeing the show more than once: After a single visit, they’d have exhausted its possibilities.