Discover the Master of the impossible. This summer on Broadway, see Antonio Díaz, the number one European illusionist in the world, as El Mago Pop!
Inspired by the idea of challenging the limits of the impossible, El Mago Pop takes a journey through the extraordinary. Through a show defined by surprise, fantasy, sensibility, rhythm and emotion, patrons experience Antonio Díaz’s close-up magic and his most unusual & spectacular illusions. El Mago Pop is a tribute to life and to the hope it instills in us. At its core, El Mago Pop is an existential reminder of all those dreams and illusions that awakened our consciousness in the earliest stages of our lives, so that we never forget who we are.
Antonio Díaz is the highest grossing European illusionist in the world! For each of the past 5 years, he has had the greatest box office success of any other artist in Spain. More than 2 million theatregoers have been astonished by the unique magic of Díaz, on stage as El Mago Pop. Díaz has also starred on the Netflix shows Magic for Humans and La Gran Ilusion, which are broadcast in nearly 200 countries.
Díaz’s skills as an illusionist are faultless, but the show feels off-kilter as a piece of theater. Díaz feels impressively in charge of his tricks, but not the show as a show. His audience interactions feel stilted and off. One little boy who was shepherded up on stage was lightly (not unpleasantly, but oddly) joshed with. Another amazing illusion required the participation of a female specifically, Díaz said. But, having watched the illusion (which really does have you rubbing your eyes in disbelief), this audience member was left thinking: that could have been a male. Why a female specifically?
The irony of the show’s self-aggrandizement is that much of Diaz’s appeal lies in his down-to-earth informality. Speaking in a heavily-accented English, he delivers no over-the-top patter; he doesn’t introduce any of his effects as being, say, the most death-defying attempt to overcome the laws of physics in human history. He dons no top hat or cape. He wears a t-shirt, jeans and a pair of sneakers – one of which he keeps on losing. Indeed, that is among the most disarming of his tricks. He keeps on retrieving the sneaker in the oddest of places, like the bottom of a tank of water — at which point we realize the sneaker had somehow disappeared from his foot yet again while we weren’t looking.
2023 | Broadway |
Broadway Special Engagment Broadway |
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