Like Carr, Sadowitz has PC in his sights. There are walk-outs within the first five minutes as Sadowitz’s opening material ranges across Grenfell Tower and a hymn to the virtues of Donald Trump. The show is called Card Tricks With Inappropriate Patter, and the joke is that Sadowitz would perform only the latter if he could get away with it.Ī week after seeing Jimmy Carr, it’s striking how the viciousness of Sadowitz’s jokes can still take the breath away. As far as Sadowitz is concerned, this is a magic act only because, otherwise, he can’t get bookings. His act is the antithesis of Penn and Teller’s: the bile to their balm, the Special Brew to their Dom Pérignon. Granddaddy of abusive comedy … Jerry Sadowitz’s viciousness can take your breath away But no one can accuse Sadowitz – the great, twisted granddaddy of abusive comedy – of being smug, and he brings a welcome dose of subversion and self-hate to the prestidigitator’s art. Neither is Jerry Sadowitz, and neither, let’s face it, is any standup comedian. This isn’t a man in any way troubled by the (near-constant) sound of his own voice. ![]() Then there’s Penn’s carnival-barker patter, which can feel too slick, too stale – and too much. What comes across forcibly is that the number of basic magic routines must be finite and, over 40 years, the challenge is to find ever glitzier ways of disguising the fact. Yet the wow factor is reduced when the tricks are mostly variants on ones you’ve seen before, if not, in several cases, exactly the same trick. ![]() But this version unfolds the routine entertainingly, and the pay-off is as satisfying as ever. I’ve seen versions before of the trick whereby Penn and Teller predict and then seal in an impermeable bottle an obscure password devised by several audience members live on stage. I haven’t the foggiest idea how they get that audience member’s mobile phone inside a fish, nor how their volunteer from the crowd makes an egg appear in an empty bag. That’s not to gainsay the quality of their tricks: the show offers up set piece after impressive set piece.
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