The Magic Show

The Magic Show is a 1974 Broadway musical, starring magician Doug Henning. Stephen Schwartz wrote the music and lyrics. It received Tony nominations for Best Featured Actor and Best Direction of a Musical.

Set in the Top Hat, a run-down nightclub in Passaic, NJ, The Magic Show tells the story of Doug, a mysterious young magician brought in by the owner Manny as a replacement for the club's current headliner, the bombastic and somewhat incompetent Feldman the Magnificent. In contrast to the seedy style of the club, Doug is bohemian, almost a hippie. Accompanying him is his assistant, Cal, whose own ragamuffin style is as much camouflage as a costume and who harbors an unrequited crush on Doug. Strangely, no one seems to notice that Doug isn't a Stage Magician -- or at least not just a stage magician -- but a genuine wizard who for his own reasons is trying to use his magic to entertain.

As Doug settles in at the club, Feldman (aided by the club's rock duo, Dina and Donna) does what he can to undermine his replacement by attacking his confidence in himself and his abilities. He's particularly intent on getting rid of Doug because a spectacular opportunity is coming -- the famous and powerful agent Goldfarb is coming to check out Donna and Dina's act at the behest of his nephew, who dates one of them. Everyone (except Doug and Cal) sees it as their chance to finally escape the Top Hat and hit the big time -- and everyone sees Doug, with his amazing magic act, as the obstacle in the way of their success.

Convinced by Feldman's suggestions that he needs a little more "style" and flair in his act, Doug literally conjures up Charmin, a new Lovely Assistant to replace Cal. Dina and Donna encourage Cal, who feels abandoned by the man she loves, to give up on both Doug and her dreams. Meanwhile, the rock duo and Feldman grow even further threatened when Charmin announces that it'll be Doug's act that Goldfarb will love when the agent gets a look at her. They plot to reveal the secrets of his magic tricks in the middle of his performance...

Based on Doug Henning's earlier Canadian show Spellbound but dramatically rewritten, The Magic Show singlehandedly reinvigorated stage magic after the collapse of Vaudeville all but killed it, and turned Henning into a household name. It ran on Broadway for over four and a half years, and is a perennial favorite for local theater companies all over.

In 1980, a heavily-modified version of the show was filmed on-stage at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Toronto, and later released on VHS and DVD. This version is missing some of the show's most memorable songs, and several new ones were added; some of the remaining original songs were given new lyrics; and both its dialogue and its lyrics have been bowdlerized. Not even the brilliant casting of Didi Conn as Cal can redeem it; it is generally considered to be a markedly inferior production compared to the original.

Tropes used in The Magic Show include:

• BSOD Song: "West End Avenue", for Cal.

• Counterpoint Duet: Donna and Dina in "Two's Company".

• Country Music: "Charmin's Lament" is written in this style.

• The Dividual: Donna and Dina make up a Syndividual; one is black and the other white (at least in the original casting), but they dress identically and are always encountered together. About the only functional difference between them is that one has a boyfriend -- Goldfarb's nephew -- and one doesn't.

• The Eleven O'Clock Number: "Sweet, Sweet, Sweet".

• The Eponymous Show

• Expository Theme Tune: "Up To His Old Tricks".

• Extremely Short Timespan: The play appears to take place in the span of a day or less; it might even be in Real Time.

• Functional Magic: In contrast to Feldman's simple tricks and illusions, Doug's magic is real.

• Gratuitous French: Liberally sprinkled throughout "Style", as part of its deliberate pretension -- including a chunk of "Alouette".

It's a matter of style, flair
Je ne sais quoi
Bravura, so to speak
You gotta come out with that smile, that air
That qu'est-ce que c'est ça
As I told Karen Horney
The day I was born I
Was chic.

• Half the Woman She Used To Be: After Doug saws her in half, the bottom half of Charmin's body is misplaced, and she spends most of the rest of the play as a legless torso laying on her back in a box on a rolling table.

• Home, Sweet Home: Subverted in "West End Avenue" -- for Cal, horribly disappointed and bitter at this point in the play, going home means giving up on her dreams to escape a grey middle-class life with no future except to grow up to become a clone of her parents:

You pack up your boots and blue jeans and your records and your pride,
And you tell yourself you ventured and you tell yourself you tried.
And it's back to the surly doormen and the canopies you go.
And the buses seem to chuckle and the towers seem to crow:
"We told you so."
West End Avenue,
Find me a golden cage to perch in.
West End Avenue,
Open your arms to one more urchin
Who's crawlin' back to mama's den.
West End Avenue,
You win again!

• "I Am Becoming" Song: A dark and negative instance in "West End Avenue", which is also a BSOD Song: Cal, wounded by Doug's betrayal, realizes that her dreams of adventure and success are unrealistic and unrealizable, and she will have to settle for going back to the home she left and becoming ordinary again.

• "I Am" Song: "Charmin's Lament", in which she complains at length about how she's always the girl who gets summoned when a mage or other supernatural wants a little no-strings nookie. Also a List Song, as she counts off all the various kinds of beings who've summoned her, what she was doing when they did, and what they wanted from her.

• I Just Want to Be Special: Cal, in a very low-key way. She wants to be more than a girl from New York with an ordinary life.

• "I Want" Song: "Lion Tamer", for Cal, which boils down to "I want to be brave and confident enough to let Doug know how I feel about him", mostly cloaked in the metaphor of being a tamer of wild animals.

• Inconvenient Summons: Charmin's lot in life, and the subject of her song, "Charmin's Lament".

• Joisey: The play takes place in a nightclub in Passaic, NJ.

• Large Ham: Feldman, "the Magnificent".

• List Song: The middle portion of "Two's Company" rattles off a list of synonyms for an unwanted addition.
  • "Charmin's Lament" lists some of the magic-users and supernatural beings who have summoned her, what she was doing when they did, and what they wanted from or did to her.

• Lovely Assistant: Cal is supposed to be this for Doug, but is too insecure and waifish in appearance. Feldman convinces Doug he needs a more conventionally "beautiful" woman as an assistant, so Doug conjures up the voluptuous Charmin to replace Cal. (Charmin, who is used to being summoned at random moments for sexual purposes, is a bit put out at a wizard who wants to saw her in half instead of the usual.)

• Magical Gesture: A standard element of Henning's magic, it was carried over into the show (and copied by Henning's successors in the lead role). You can see a brief example in the last seconds of this video of Didi Conn singing "Lion Tamer".

• Magicians Are Wizards: Heavily implied -- indeed, all but said outright -- about Doug. When he needs a Lovely Assistant, he doesn't hire one, he summons her with a spell. And when she turns out to be a royal bitch, he permanently turns her into a leopard.

• Masquerade: Genuine magic is clearly real in the world of The Magic Show, but almost unknown to the average person.

• Massive Multiplayer Ensemble Number: The opener, "Up To His Old Tricks", employs the entire cast outside of the roles they will play for the rest of the show.
  • To a lesser degree "The Goldfarb Variations".

• Minor Character, Major Song: Mike and Steve, who join Manny and Charmin in The Eleven O'Clock Number, "Sweet, Sweet, Sweet"

• Mundane Utility: Doug using genuine wizardry for stage magic.

• New Age Retro Hippie: Doug, especially in comparison with the disco splendor of Dina and Donna, and the tattered tuxedo and top hat look of Feldman.

• Oblivious to Love: Doug, regarding Cal. Subverted at the very end of the show, when he gets rid of Charmin and summons Cal back to him -- dressed as a lion tamer.

• Only One Name: Doug doesn't actually seem to have a last name, not that anyone notices...

• Opening Chorus: "Up To His Old Tricks".

• Original Cast Precedent: The protagonist always goes by his actor's own name. On Broadway, this started with "Doug" for Doug Henning, followed by "Jeff" for first replacement Jeffrey Mylett, and then "Joe" for second replacement Joe Abaldo.

• Our Acts Are Different: This is a full-length, one-act play.

• Patter Song: The middle section of "Two's Company".

• Revenge: The subject of "Sweet, Sweet, Sweet" -- and its very last word.

• Saw a Woman In Half: Doug does this to Charmin, and then her bottom half gets lost -- she spends most of the play as a legless torso on a rolling table, bemoaning her state.

• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: In the opening song, "Up To His Old Tricks", there's the line "Clap, clap! Pop up the dusty flowers."

• Sidekick Song: "Solid Silver Platform Shoes", for Donna and Dina.

• Small Start, Big Finish: "Up To His Old Tricks", "Style", "Two's Company".

• So Beautiful It's a Curse: As Charmin says repeatedly in "Charmin's Lament":

It's a nightmare, being a dream come true.

• "Somewhere" Song: Subverted/inverted by "West End Avenue".

• The Song Before the Storm: "A Bit of Villainy".

• Southern Belle: Charmin, judging from her accent.

• Stage Magician: Feldman. Doug is a genuine wizard trying to be a Stage Magician.

• Statuesque Stunner: The usual casting for Charmin tends this way; the role was originated by Anita Morris.

• Summon Magic: Doug demonstrates this at least twice during the course of the show, by summoning first Charmin, and then Cal at the end of the show.

• Those Two Guys: Mike and Steve, whose parts are so minimal that they're not even mentioned in the summary above. But they still get to take part in The Eleven O'Clock Number.

• Tropacabana: Takes place entirely in The Top Hat, a run-down nightclub in Passaic, NJ.

• Upper West Side Boredom: What prompted Cal to end up with Doug in the first place.

• Unrequited Love: Cal, for Doug.

• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The reaction of the other cast members to Doug summoning Charmin out of thin air is surprisingly muted.

• Villain Song: "Style" is a particularly subtle one, in that Feldman initially seems to be imparting friendly advice to Doug, but is in fact trying to eviscerate the young magician's self-confidence.
  • And then there's the obvious one, "A Bit of Villainy".

• A Worldwide Punomenon: Charmin, reduced to half of herself by the misplacing of her hips and legs after she was sawn in half, sings this in "The Goldfarb Variations":

My big chance depends on whether
I can pull myself together.

• Yiddish as a Second Language: Shows up in the occasional lyric, such as "Bet your tuchus/He can book us" from "The Goldfarb Variations". ("Tuchus", pronounced -- and sometime spelled -- "tookus", means "butt" or "rear end".)