Alas, there was no Lord Duckly. A friend who saw Lance Burton said that his act had far fewer birds than they'd ever seen before. A rumor was whispered that Vegas casinos are trying to phase out bird acts altogether thanks to bird flu fears. Or perhaps Penn's craving for foie gras just got the better of him. Who knows?
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***WARNING! SPOILERS!***
Minor SPOILERS ahead!!! Don't read if you don't want to know anything about P&T's current act.
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The act was mostly the same all four nights I saw it (front row each night), except that for the first three nights they did not open with Teller popping out of a box on stage, and the fourth night they put it back in (I'm glad - it's a great opener and gets the crowd all abuzz). I don't know the correct titles of all their routines, but here's what they did (not in order, 'cause I have brain damage from staring up Penn's nose and can't remember exactly):
- Polyester God: Teller does various cut & restore tricks on a long piece of material, then wraps it around the neck of cute kid from audience and somehow manages not to throttle her with it.
- Knife Throw: Penn throws knives at volunteer than has them do the same to him ... sort of. *g* Hilarious bit, especially the couple of times the volunteer was too scared to let go of the knife.
- Penn juggles fire & broken glass bottles (comment heard from somebody sitting behind me: "Talented bastard!"
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- Shadows: Teller carves at shadow of a rose with a knife, and the real rose falls to bits. Stunning. My personal favorite bit.
- Unicorn: Penn in straitjacket stands on a stool and Nate puts a noose around his neck. Screen comes down in front of him so you can only see Penn's feet, and then Teller does shadow puppets on the screen to the tune of the Unicorn song. At one point he decides Penn's stool is just the prop he needs and he yanks it out from under Penn's flailing feet, and Penn gets "really hung". Or not. I'm not telling.
- Psychic comic: Teller distributes joke books into the audience, and Penn asks each person with a book to select a joke that has personal meaning to them. He then employs various techniques used by "real" psychics (cold reading, hot reading, etc) and figures out what joke they picked. Really well done. During the banter for this, Penn cues the audience to say "Bull-SHIT!"
- Fish to coins (Silverfish): Teller pulls a volunteer from audience, sits her in a chair holding a fishbowl and a towel, produces handfuls of coins from a tank apparently only filled with water (and 'plucks' more coins from thin air) and pours them into the bowl. Then he takes the coins from the bowl and pours them back into the tank, transforming them into goldfish. Impressive and beautiful.
- Flag: As seen on West Wing, only with Penn doing all the lines instead of sharing them with Alan Alda. At the end, Teller re-vanishes the flag with a flash of light and it appears back on the flagpole.
- Wood Chipper: Similar to how it was done in Unpleasant World. Teller "talks" (drowned out by the noise) while dropping cards into a wood chipper, restores a card and matches it to a torn-off bit, then he produces a BUNNY ... 'nuff said.
- Air Sax: Jonesy on piano and Penn on stand-up bass play a jazzy tune, while Teller 'plays' a saxophone that produces puffs of air, and bits of paper 'dance' to the music.
- Fire eating date: Done exactly as it's done in their various TV specials. Penn and the gorgeous Georgie Bernasek suggestively eat fire together while Mike Jones plays a lovely tune on the piano, accompanied by Teller on the vibraphones. Sexy!
- Bullet catch: Volunteers mark bullets, which are fired by P&T into each other's faces with 357 magnums, and apparently caught in their teeth. Amazing and DAMN SEXXXXY! *g*
That's it (I think)! The entire show is just fabulous, and was well worth seeing multiple times. I can't wait to go back.
~JoMadge
Edited to add: Air sax!
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