Energy makes Seth Grabel’s magic show stand out

A magician working on a slim budget couldn’t compete against the big shows. Until, that is, he gets his big break on a top-rated network TV show. What a story!

What, you’ve heard it before? Guess so.

“America’s Got Talent” is the reason Seth Grabel has his own modest little show to write about here. But his Las Vegas competition includes two other “Talent” alumni, Murray SawChuck and Nathan Burton.

And the fast fade of last fall’s “Talent” finalists, combined into in a package show at the Palazzo, suggests there are just too many different TV contests now to hold our attention for very long.

Still, Grabel seems to be working more steadily than Professor Splash, the guy who edged him off “Talent” by diving 40 feet into a kiddie pool.

And something about Grabel makes you think the guy’s got a chance. People like him and respond to him.

And for now, the Wolf Theater at the Clarion is a big upgrade from his last room, a low-ceilinged nontheater at the Royal Resort. This 100-seater was built as a movie screening room by long-ago owner Debbie Reynolds, and it offers a decent-sized stage.

The odd venue, combined with the fact that Grabel being not just one kind of magician or another, is both a blessing and a curse. Murray’s show at the Tropicana Las Vegas’ Laugh Factory is predefined as comedy magic by its setting. Likewise, Burton’s larger stage at the Saxe Theater primes expectations for larger illusions.

It’s a littler harder to parse out what Grabel is up to here, and it sometimes seems like he’s still figuring that out, too. But most of what made him stand out on television is in play.

There’s his athleticism, for starters. “Gimme some energy!” he yells before a straitjacket escape, but he has plenty already.

He surprises the audience with some gymnastic flips at the beginning, and again toward the end when he takes a ride in a Cyr wheel, the metal hoop you more often see circus acrobats spin around in.

There’s even a bit of dance choreography at the end of a quick-change number with a female assistant. And you assume Grabel’s youth and dexterity has something to do with the speed of that short-sleeved card manipulation.

Grabel is still a work in progress, and I wouldn’t blame you if you decided to wait for him to end up at his next career step. Because he works almost alone here, a lot of video clips and padding help him cover an already brief hour’s running time.

(Grabel tells me he sometimes has a guest magician, which seems a fine idea. The policy does add nice variety to both Murray’s and Burton’s shows).

But the argument against waiting would be to point out that the bigger stuff isn’t really the best of what you see here.

Sure, it’s great to see the classic “metamorphosis,” also known as the substitution trunk, and a mad scientist bit that turns a doll into a live woman. But I think a better test of whether a magician is here to stay is how well they pull off the $20 bill thing.

Almost all of them do some variation of it: Borrow the biggest bill they can from an audience member – it’s almost always a 20-spot – and pretend-destroy it in some comic fashion. At some point later, the bill turns up again, sometimes in a piece of fruit or a can of soup.

While many Vegas magic shows were about tigers or big props, this trick depends on the humor and personality a magician brings to it.

Grabel adds pocket-picking to his version, even a little ventriloquism. He interrupts it with the straitjacket escape, and when he gets to the end it involves both a lemon and an orange, as well as an egg.

Test passed.

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at
mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.