Rouven works hard to give stock illusions a twist at Clarion

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So many magicians, but who has the real magic?

Las Vegas is capitalism on steroids, so it’s you ticket buyers who must decide if we really need a half-dozen big-box illusion shows. Jan Rouven is the latest to the party this summer, with next week’s scheduled return of Steve Wyrick bringing the magic number to seven.

Each show pretends to ignore the others, which is one reason you see a lot of the material duplicated. Another is that none of the contenders has been humble enough to propose some type of Justice League of magic team-up; they all hope the others will go away.

It’s harder to apply the same blind eye to actually reviewing magic shows. You see a few and they become jazzlike variations on a theme. Yet to newbies in the audience — youngsters in particular — the cabinet tricks have a first-time thrill.

They are in solid hands with Rouven. He’s a young, likable German with charisma and only minimally goofy stage attire (sparkly yes, but no epaulets or animal prints). He has no good business reason to be at the tiny Clarion, yet he gets you on his side of the uphill fight if you do happen to make it there.

Rouven tries to give his modest-budget “Illusions” a big look, as well as a unifying theme of danger and escape. The road occasionally wanders, but at least he’s outlined some kind of plan to define himself.

He also works hard to give the stock illusions a twist. One of the most widely seen essentials, the “metamorphosis” or “substitution trunk,” gets two. First, the lightning-speed switch with lovely assistant Johanna Grajales comes after Rouven is locked in tank of water. Later, the two pull off a variation after Rouven is locked in a trunk high off the ground, with some B-movie knives thrown in for added threat.

A shared concept also inspires two memorable audience-participation bits. Rouven instructs a recruit to call upon his “inner voice” to guide a fist-slamming, Russian roulette version of Whac-A-Mole, with one sharp knife hidden amid five paper bags.

Later, another volunteer similarly pulls on ropes that release swords, which fall dramatically close to Rouven’s supine body. As with the knife gambit, she somehow manages to save the fatal one for last.

It’s refreshing to have an illusionist young and physically spry enough to play the danger card convincingly, not just jamming younger assistants into boxes. (It may just be mean gossip, but who can resist rumors of more than one Strip magician forced to retire illusions because they can no longer fit inside the props?)

Thankfully, Rouven doesn’t play it cool. His wide-eyed double-takes and funny German accent (and what German accent isn’t?) are better suited to a comedy magician, a nice counterpoint to the attempted thrills. When Rouven gets better at working this contrast (some real jokes would help), it should compensate for the inevitable loss of youth.

The Clarion show only stumbles in the many stretches when he’s not onstage. Four young dancers work their tails off to kill time for the contraptions to be set up. But no one really comes to a magic show to see some dude go Zoolander. Late in an 80-minute show that seems much longer, the troupe arrives at a novel solution: doing one of the illusions — the ol’ pass-through-the-fan blade — on their own without Rouven.

But that’s a daring challenge to the essential truth that it’s the magician, not the illusion, that matters. And Rouven seems like a guy who could matter on the Strip, if only some of those guys with less charm would go away. Or join his Justice League.

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