Magic and Mystery Tour
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Penn & Teller's Magic and Mystery Tour is a 2003 television documentary miniseries starring Penn & Teller. The program was created by the CBC in association with Channel 4 Film.
The show focuses on street magic, and the subjects of each of the three shows are China (Chinese Linking Rings), India (Indian Rope Trick), and Egypt (Cups and Balls, Gali-Gali men). Unusually for Penn and Teller, Teller speaks in every episode, although one of their trademark schticks is that Penn does all the speaking.
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[edit] China
This episode begins in Beijing, which, until the 1949 Revolution, had an extensive history of street magic. Modern day "street magic" is performed in teahouses. Besides the basic sleight of hand work (e.g. Cups and Balls) and carnival stunts (specifically, a man who eats glass and bricks), two tricks with historic ties are demonstrated.
The first trick involves a man who produces various glass bowls filled with water from beneath a large robe. These bowls are of all shapes and sizes, often also contain flowers, and several are quite elaborate; one produced set is a stack of seven bowls of diminishing size.
The second is a mask trick derived from Szechwan opera. The magician, in fractions of a second (the video is not fast enough to register the changes), alters the mask he wears. The performer has ten different masks, and also uses his normal face as a "mask" in the performance.
Their next stop is an acrobatics school, where a "master" is teaching a classful of late-year students various basic tricks.
After their trip to the acrobatics school, a place where many of these students will end up is displayed: an empty (and unheated, even in the dead of winter) "Acrobatics World". The performers, be they acrobatics performers or magicians, perform quite admirably, for no audience (save Penn, Teller, and their camera crew).
Finally, the duo proceed to Wanking, a small town in the hinterlands, where a great many residents perform some form of magic. When a family prepares to go to the town center to perform, Teller asks to perform a trick.
[edit] India
In India, where street magic is very alive, a family of street magicians take center stage. The tricks performed are of an exceptionally bloody nature; in one trick, a tongue is cut out; in another, a stage knife, oozing blood, is stuck in the neck of a child.
Several tricks demonstrated in this episode have injury of a family member as a theme. A magician performs the Basket Trick with his son. These forms of trick are seen as an inspiration for the alleged brutality of the Indian Rope Trick, where a small child, most likely the magician's son, is cut up and re-formed.
A magician does, in fact, perform a rope trick in front of the Taj Mahal; a rope does come out of a basket vertically, and a small child sent to climb it does so. However, the child is not injured or bloodied in any way.
The brutal versions of the rope trick seem to have come from retelling. Penn and Teller set up a "performance" where a foreign couple enters the auditorium at the end of the trick, when the rope falls down and the child miraculously comes back to life. Rumors about the rope trick started spreading both within the local community and in England, when the couple returned home.
Penn and Teller do feel that one of the actions of street magicians in India is unethical. At the end of the performances, the street magicians attempt to sell magic rings, which the magician represents as a source of good luck or power.
[edit] Egypt
In an Egyptian tomb, it is alleged that a 4,000 year old hieroglyph depicts the Cups and Balls trick. Penn and Teller go in search of both this tomb and the Gali-Gali men, a group of magicians with an extensive history made popular in the West by Luxor Gali-Gali.
In this episode, Penn and Teller perform their particular version of the Cups and Balls in the tomb with the hieroglyphs, concluding with the revelation of a potato.
[edit] Trivia
- In each locale, Penn and Teller eat canned food flown in from Canada. This was due to a fear about local cuisine which Penn has harbored for the majority of his adult life (he makes it a habit to bring food and water with him when traveling abroad). A friend of theirs, another magician (whose name is not given), died in India due to food poisoning. Throughout the programs they make multiple references to their hotel full of food, especially when in China (which includes a myriad of insect and arachnid kebobs and "fragrant and tasty dog casserole").
- In China, Penn and Teller are involved in an automobile accident, which becomes part of the program.
- In Egypt, the duo - and their camera team - are exceptionally well protected near the tombs. Several watercraft laden with special police surround the craft used by Penn and Teller, which itself is also heavily laden with police.
- In their hotel room in Egypt, there was an arrow pointing to the direction of Mecca. Penn changed the direction of the arrow.
- The title is a parody on The Beatles song "Magical Mystery Tour".
