Gramercy and Flatiron events: The best shows and happenings

Review by Adam Feldman  The low-key dazzling Speakeasy Magick has been nestled in the atmospheric McKittrick Hotel for more than a year, and now it has moved up to the Lodge: a small wood-framed room at Gallow Green, which functions as a rooftop bar in the summer. The show’s dark and noisy new digs suit it well. Hosted by Todd Robbins (Play Dead), who specializes in mild carnival-sideshow shocks, Speakeasy Magick is a moveable feast of legerdemain; audience members, seated at seven tables, are visited by a series of performers in turn. Robbins describes this as “magic speed dating.” One might also think of it as tricking: an illusion of intimacy, a satisfying climax, and off they go into the night. The evening is punctuated with brief performances on a makeshift stage. When I attended, the hearty Matthew Holtzclaw kicked things off with sleight of hand involving cigarettes and booze; later, the delicate-featured Alex Boyce pulled doves from thin air. But it’s the highly skilled close-up magic that really leaves you gasping with wonder. Holtzclaw’s table act comes to fruition with a highly effective variation on the classic cups-and-balls routine; the elegant, Singapore-born Prakash and the dauntingly tattooed Mark Calabrese—a razor of a card sharp—both find clever ways to integrate cell phones into their acts. Each performer has a tight 10-minute act, and most of them are excellent, but that’s the nice thing about the way the show is structured: If one of them happens to...

Dan White is something of a local sensation and a regular guest on Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show, and it's not hard to see why. His show, which sells out weeks in advance, is an ideal fancy-date night. Handsome and smooth, White offers modern variations on classic routines, blending multiple kinds of magic (mentalism, card tricks, illusionism) into an admirably variegated evening of entertainment. If a few of the effects don't fit the intimacy of the room—when I saw the show in its previous incarnation at the Nomad Hotel, a transformation illusion didn't quite come off—most of the tricks leave you happily agape, especially when performed in such cosy quarters. You'll probably never see a levitation act at such close range, and you may leave feeling a few feet off the ground yourself.

Theater review by Raven SnookIn a moment of gaping political wounds and sores, a high-spirited musical comedy about Barack Obama may sound like a balm. Sadly, the overlong and tonally befuddled 44—written, directed and produced by TV writer Eli Bauman, who campaigned for Obama in Las Vegas as a young man—is often as much of a slog as the partisan idiocy it mocks. Joe Biden (a broad Chad Doreck, milking every possible laugh) intermittently narrates this unsharp satire, which traces the ups and downs of the first Black first family from Obama's inspiring speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention to his second inauguration. As Barack and Michelle, T.J. Wilkins and the mononymous Shanice smartly avoid impersonation and instead raise the spoof with powerhouse pipes, belting the hell out of Bauman's pastiche R&B score. Most of the songs sound so familiar that you can essentially hum along, but a few are bangers; there's a reason "M.F.O." (short for "Mutherfukin' Obama") is reprised so frequently. 44—The Musical | Photograph: Jenny Anderson Considering Obama's enemies were obsessed with his race, perhaps it's fitting that, as a parody, 44 is only skin deep; "How Black Is Too Black?" is about as profound as the show’s questions get. Most of the humor is of the lazily outrageous variety: Obama's nemeses, in cahoots with a cabal called W.H.A.M.—an acronym for White Hetero Affluent Men—include a villainous Mitch McConnell (Larry Cedar, making the most of his rap song), an...

The Civilians, one of Off Broadway's most consistently searching and original troupes, joins forces with the Vineyard to present a new play written by Anne Washburn and directed by Steve Cosson. This duo's previous collaborations include 2013's mind-blowing Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play; this one, set in a self-isolated Northern California community, is tantalizingly described as a story about "a death, a pageant, a rescue, a resurrection, pigs, and the act of saying grace." Casting has not yet been announced.