EL MAGO POP Makes You Believe In Magic Again — Review

It turns out there is still space for old-fashioned magic in a pop culture landscape full of mainstream smoke and mirrors but short on earnest make-believe. 37-going-on-17 Spanish illusionist Antonio Díaz – El Mago Pop – brings his well-executed, dazzling act to Broadway for a short spell, before an apparently imminent American takeover once his newly purchased theatre opens in Branson, MO.

If, like me, you’d never heard of Díaz, you find yourself in mixed company upon entering the Barrymore Theatre, where half the crowd is somewhat amusedly questioning the showman’s credentials and the other half, at least at the performance I attended, is raving enthusiastically in Castilian, apparently already familiar and besotted.

One of the production’s many video segments will inform you that he now joins the likes of “Marlon Brando, Sigourney Weaver, and Samuel L. Jackson” by playing the Barrymore Theatre, with others trumpeting more of the improbable-sounding records he’s broken across the pond, and the rest playing out a saccharine, comic-book themed narrative about his childhood fascination with superheroes and other illusions.

El Mago Pop is not lacking in self-promotional fanfare – maybe 10 of its 80 quick minutes are composed of this kind of trumpeting at which cynics like me might balk. But what first comes across as Barnum-like hucksterism softens to reveal the act’s lovable core.

The diminutive Díaz, whose smile sometimes twists into flirtation, says he traces his disposition and gee-whiz adherence to believing you can to films like Star Wars, Forrest Gump, and Back to the Future. Watching clips of them in yet another of the show’s videos, I was reminded of the childlike, soulfully reparative sense of disbelief they inspired.

Díaz, jadedness be damned, accomplishes the same thing. Though the illusions will not be new to anyone familiar with Vegas-style magicians like David Copperfield or the sleazier Criss Angel – objects, and audience members, disappear and reappear onstage; numbers are incredibly divined without logical explanation; the man himself flies, waving off apparent wires – what separates Díaz from their sexed-up style of audience domination is his ability to forge a successful narrative and thematic connection to his still-there innocence and lifelong fascination with physics and possibility.

At a time when comic books mean green screens and Gwyneth Paltrow not caring to remember the Marvel films she stars in, or when the theatre’s own adaptation of Back to the Future is as bleak and unimaginative as the dollar would allow, El Mago Pop emerges as a brand ambassador for true wonderment. A helicopter might have appeared on a Broadway stage over 30 years ago, but Díaz makes its blink-and-it's-there reappearance cause for true celebration.

‍El Mago Pop is in performance through August 27, 2023 at the Barrymore Theatre on West 47th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.