Debuting this evening on Broadway is one of the touring companies of a show called The Illusionists. It's at the Palace Theater there through January 1 for the tourist crowd. At the moment, there's one other troupe of The Illusionists touring the middle of the country. It's currently in Madison, Wisconsin and heading on to Toronto and then to San Antonio and other towns.
Each show is a presentation by seven or eight great magicians who are identified as certain kinds of specialists. The company opening in New York consists of Dana Daniels (The Charlatan), Charlie Frye (The Eccentric), Mark Kalin (The Showman), Jinger Leigh (The Conjuress), Thommy Ten and Amélie van Tass (The Clairvoyants), Justo Thaus Jin (The Grand Carlini), Rick Thomas (The Immortal) and Jonathan Goodwin (The Daredevil).
The cast in Wisconsin at the moment is made up of Darcy Oake (The Grand Illusionist), Dan Sperry (The Anti-Conjuror), Andrew Basso, (The Escapologist), Kevin James, (The Inventor), Ben Blaque (The Weapon Master), Colin Cloud (The Deductionist) and Jeff Hobson (The Trickster). I gather the lineups in each troupe change from time to time. No matter how they mix and match them, you get a roster of great magicians because those are all really fine performers.
If you go see 'em in Manhattan, pay particular attention to my pal Charlie Frye, who is both a magician and the best comedy juggler I've ever seen. In fact, every time I eat with Charlie, I feel like I oughta buy a ticket because he juggles the dishes, makes the restaurant's silverware disappear, tears the check in pieces and then restores it…
And I see that he also now has apparently mastered the ability to travel back in time and change his race. Since he's on Broadway now, Playbill has added him to their database of performers who've played the Great White Way. In one section of their website, they show the Playbills for each show in which a performer has appeared.
There on the site, they have Charlie Frye appearing in The Illusionists (current) but until yesterday, they also had up the Playbill for Run, Little Chillun, a 1933 Broadway play with an all-black cast. They may have taken it down thinking it was a different Charlie Frye in that show's cast but I know how amazing my friend is. I wouldn't doubt he could somehow pull it off.