Magical prankster Michael Carbonaro is joyfully filling in for legendary duo Penn & Teller at the Rio as the longtime Las Vegas headliners tour Australia. He’s probably best known for the offbeat, often shocking illusions he produces on TV’s The Carbonaro Effect, but this version of his touring performance, dubbed Lies on Stage, will bring plenty of new material to Las Vegas, and introduce audiences to a theatrical style of magic they haven’t seen before.
How does it feel to get the blessing of the legendary Penn & Teller to take over their space in Vegas?
To say I’ve been a fan of Penn & Teller my whole life is an understatement. People always ask me if I’d ever go on their TV show Fool Us and try to fool them. I can now say with confidence that convincing them to trust me with the keys to their theater while they are away counts as fooling them big time.
For people who haven’t seen you, how would you describe your live performance, and will these shows be similar to your touring show?
I treat the crowd like we are friends. I like to play with them, tease them, and keep them laughing. The goal is to sustain an electric buzz in the air where it’s truly unknown what is real and what is a trick. This show is a special riff on my brand-new tour show, which has only had a limited number of shows thus far. For Vegas, I’m keeping it open to swap some things in and out and around each night and experiment. It keeps me on my toes, which is where I want to be.
Which is more fun for you, to do The Carbonaro Effect, where people don’t know you’re a magician until it’s too late, or to perform live when everyone thinks they know what to expect?
Live in front of an audience is where it’s at for me. There’s nothing like the magic of being in the moment, in the here and now. I think a lot of fans used to seeing me do magic on TV still secretly wonder if there are camera tricks, or it’s all actors and not real people. You can feel the release of wild excitement when they are there in the theater seeing things like they’ve seen on TV, but this time it’s happening to them, right in front of their own eyes. There’s just nothing like it.
How did your theater studies at NYU help mold the type of entertainer you wanted to become?
To really transcend and sustain an entire evening’s show … one has to be an entertainer. Sometimes you see an artist, a singer, magician or comedian that may look great in short, edited segments on TV, but couldn’t hold a full evening’s live show. It’s a different game. And it’s the game I like to be in.
Could these shows be a stepping stone to a permanent Las Vegas residency show?
Hey, I’m a magician, anything is possible.
Rio, ticketmaster.com
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