Penn & Teller’s sleight of hand that brings a flutter to the heart
Penn & Teller – the world’s most famous living magicians – still find wonder and surprise as their magic fools us show after show.
Penn Jillette is playing “tourist” when we chat to him ahead of a Brisbane season.
“I’m looking out at the Sydney Opera House right now,” says Jillette, one half of the iconic US magic act, Penn & Teller. He’s chatting as he angles his camera to take in the magical arches of our Aussie icon.
Jillette is in Australia with his lifelong partner in magic, Raymond Teller, to premiere the Penn & Teller: 50th Anniversary Tour. But it’s unlikely you’ll actually see him taking in the sights of Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane. In fact, the view he’s offering of the Opera House is through his hotel window.
“I’m not a sightseeing sort of guy,” he explains. “Teller loves to go to the museums and galleries. He goes here, he goes there. But I go down to the coffee shop and open my laptop. I just travel for my work.”
And work they will be doing, with the duo putting together an entirely new show for Australia, despite touring here only three years ago.
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“Everything is brand new,” Jillette promises. “Sometimes you see old people who are entertainers and they do like a big retrospective of their lives. I have no interest in that. We don’t do the same show twice. We change it every week. Just because it’s fun.”
After forming their act in Philadelphia in 1975, their relentless passion for work has made Penn & Teller the most famous magicians in the world, with numerous TV shows, celebrated Broadway runs, theatre productions and a long-running Las Vegas show in their own theatre. Not even the pending death of his beloved mother stopped Jillette from taking the stage, albeit at her insistence.
“My mom was slipping into a coma and I had a show three days later on New Year’s Day,” he says. “So, I said, ‘Mom, I’m going to cancel that show’, and she said, ‘You’re not going to cancel that show and that’s my final wish’. It was amazing, she even told me how to grieve.”
Jillette tells this story with his trademark style of brash and playful honesty. As the duo’s literal mouthpiece (Teller famously does not speak during performances), Jillette is well-known for his passionate views on a wide range of social and political issues, particularly when it comes to debunking pseudoscience and the paranormal.
“It’s always been very important to us that we respect the audience and that they understand that what we’re doing is a trick,” he says. “It’s not supernatural, it’s physics.”
This commitment to honesty is a signature feature of Penn & Teller’s stage show, with the duo often revealing how their tricks are executed. But this doesn’t mean that Jillette is beyond a sense of genuine wonder as he name-checks a long list of magician friends who still have the power to amaze and delight him.
One friend in particular is Gold Coast magician Helen Coghlan and her father Arthur, who have together designed tricks that have consistently baffled Penn & Teller on their long-running TV show Fool Us.
“Last time we were in Australia we went to their house and they took us into the garage where they spend their time working on new ways to fool us,” Jillette says. “What could be more flattering.”
He explains that this sort of sharing captures the special spirit between magicians when they debut a new trick.
“They absolutely blow my mind,” he says. “People try to frame it as a competition but it’s really love letters back and forth, between magicians. They give a part of their heart and that makes me cry.”
Despite 50 years on stage, it’s clear there’s still a lot more magic in Penn & Teller, even in an age of zoom calls, digital media and artificial intelligence.
“In a live show … there are things that happen to people when they’re in crowds that are really interesting,” Jillette says. “There’s a kind of flutter in the heart that I believe you can’t quite get watching movies or TV. You’ve got to be there, in person.”
Penn & Teller: 50th Anniversary Tour, Concert Hall, QPAC, January 29 to February 7; qpac.com.au