ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 16, 1996 TAG: 9603190019
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 10 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: REVIEW
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
Here's a little secret most people don't know about David Copperfield. There are really two of him. How else can you explain the way he does such great tricks?
Only the two David Copperfields who performed Thursday night at the Roanoke Civic Center are not actually separate people. They are the master illusionist's split personalities: Funny David and his twin brother, Melodramatic David.
It's sort of a schizophrenic pairing, but both personalities are entertaining in their own ways.
Thursday night, Funny David was the side of Copperfield that interacted with the audience - and got a lot of laughs.
When a couple walked in late for his 9 p.m. show, he turned the spotlight on them and offered a sardonic re-cap of his trick entrance. ``We had this elevator,'' he said, ``and it was empty and I appeared in it, like magic.''
Later, he stole some binoculars from a woman who was spying on him from the first row of the auditorium. He held the binoculars up for the audience to see. ``She's in the front row,'' he observed dryly.
Then he turned the binoculars back on her, studying her for a moment. ``How does it feel?''
(Mysteriously, a woman with binoculars in the front row also attended his earlier 5:30 p.m. show, as did a couple who arrived late.)
Funny David did another hilarious bit using a woman from the audience. He called this segment ``The Disappearing Egg'' and ``The Disappearing Chicken.'' The way he did the trick was by tossing the eggs over her head to a stagehand who had snuck up behind her. For the chicken trick, he blocked the woman's view with a towel and then handed off the bird to this same stagehand.
What made it so funny was that the audience could see what was happening, while the woman couldn't. Her amazed reactions were priceless.
Copperfield capped off this routine by making the chicken reappear again inside the towel - without the help of any stagehands.
Funny David poked fun at himself as well.
``A lot of critics say I can't get through a show without a pretty lady, a lot of smoke and a fan blowing my hair,'' he said in introducing an illusion he called ``The Fan.'' ``Well, tonight, I'm going to prove them right.''
That was where Melodramatic David took over.
With all of his big illusions, ``The Fan,'' ``The Laser,'' ``The Death Saw'' and others, Copperfield's trademark is to overkill on the dramatics. The music was loud and throbbing and deliberately suspenseful, like something from a ``Batman'' movie. The theatrical lighting evoked a similarly suspenseful mood. And yes, there was a lot of smoke.
There also was a time-consuming amount of provocative dancing - actually, choreographed groping would be a better description - with two leggy female assistants. (Apparently, Copperfield's fiancee, Claudia Schiffer, is an understanding woman.)
The drama was a little silly, but the illusions were pretty terrific.
In ``The Fan,'' for example, Copperfield and one of his assistants walked into the blades of a giant rotating fan, turned to smoke, and then reappeared a few seconds later wrapped all over each other in a plume of smoke from the middle of the auditorium.
Melodramatic David's showstopper was a haunted room in which he placed three audience members who were subsequently stolen away by the spirit world. Copperfield brought them back a short time later. It was impressive because he made them materialize on a separate platform behind a curtain that didn't appear to have any trap doors or wires or secret entrances.
In the end, it was Copperfield himself who proved there are really two David Copperfields. Maybe even three. In his finale, the illusionist filled the auditorium with snow. (Actually, it was foam, but under the lights, it looked remarkably like snow.)
Copperfield told a heartwarming story of his own snowless childhood. Then, in the midst of the snowstorm he had created, a second David Copperfield appeared. Only it wasn't Funny David this time. Or Melodramatic David.
Spinning wistfully as the foam flakes fell onto his face, it was David as a boy.
LENGTH: Medium: 78 linesby CNB