It’s the perfect combination.  Trickery is the root of all magic and David Ben is a modern master of trickery and deception.

After exploring the Golden Age of Magic with The Conjuror, David Ben thought it was now time to cast off Victorian pretension and piety, go back to basics, the root of all magic - trickery - just for the fun of it.  That’s not to say that the magic in Tricks was plucked from thin air or based on a whim. No, a trickster – a shaman, raven, jester, juggler, conjuror, or magician – leaves nothing to chance.

The tricks in Tricks include timeless pieces of magic as well as new pieces inspired by an eclectic range of people and events: Frank Sinatra and Telford Fenton, Glenn Gould and Charles Bertram, Harold Lloyd and the Marx Brothers, Tom Waits and Erik Satie, Hammer Studio Films, Southern Baptist preachers and the Cherry Blossom Festival in Japan. There is no timeline or plot – just great tricks – comical and mysterious, beautiful and visceral – performed with twists and turns.

Now, some will ask if Tricks is for kids. Well, that depends. It is not for the very young (under seven). The show is being written and staged for adults but kids will like it too.  It is a show for all ages.  Richard Ouzounian, theatre critic for the Toronto Star, described it best:

Ben makes skilful use of audience members of all types, treating them gently with his sly charm. His secret is to treat the children as adults and the adults as children; it works beautifully and it lets us all feel like we're an integral part of the experience.

Now, a special feature of this touring production is that the content of each performance will vary depending on the size of the theatre.  David and his team will carry two shows – one for studio theatres seating up to 200 people and the other for theatres seating up to 1,000.  The magic and music for each show is filtered through the same creative team, giving it the theatrical look, feel and experience that have become hallmarks associated with David Ben.

Your audience needs to see Tricks for the same reason that Luc Sante wrote that people need Secrets.

“People need secrets because they need the assurance that there is something left to discover, that they have not exhausted the limits of the environment, that a prize might lie in wait like money in the pocket of an old jacket…It’s not that secrets make them feel small but that they make the world seem bigger.” 

That is what Tricks is all about:  making the world seem bigger.