‘Monday Night Magic’ at The Cutting Room- Unadulterated FUN!

By Alix Cohen

Magic is the only honest profession. A magician promises to deceive you—and then does.

With almost thirty years under its belt, Monday Night Magic is the city’s longest running Off-Broadway magic show. When the art seemed to otherwise fade (though never disappear) from popular culture, MNM endured.People are curious creatures.

Show me something that creates wonder, that raises the question “how?” audiences challenge. Give me a taste of the inexplicable on which most of us were weaned. (fairy tales.)

October 12. Doors to The Cutting Room open at 6:30. Settle in, order drinks and dinner. Prices are modest, the kitchen good.
Every magic show is different.

Eleven- count’m- eleven close up magician pass from table to table. You’re mere feet away from legerdemain, yet can’t see how it’s done. Each practitioner has his own patter. They’re open and friendly.

At our table, rectangles of cut-out magazine pages offered as stimulus bills morphed into faux hundred dollar greenbacks. A silver ring ended up on a magician’s key chain with his car keys, then inside his wallet in a sealed envelope. I held a red rubber ball in my first. The performer held another one. His disappeared, mine replicated itself in my closed hand.

The prestidigitator put a small crumpled piece of paper on the table and asked a woman to my left to type the person she first kissed into his phone. On the crumpled paper was the same name. (No magicians knew I was reviewing.)

Between 8:15 and 8:30, the stage show begins.Tonight’s host is T.J. Tana (Thomas Joseph Tana) who began performing publicly at age 12 and accrued enough from private and corporate gigs to buy his first car in cash by age 16. The rest is history.

At his direction, a volunteer places a big glass upside down on top of a shot glass. He borrows a ring, holding it under a handkerchief. She takes both, feeling the solid jewelry. The cloth is pulled away. No ring.

He mimes tossing it towards the glasses. We hear a clink.The ring is now under the shot glass. Tana is bright and welcoming.
He’d make a good barker outside a carnival tent.

UK’s Stu Turner, seamlessly blends comedy and nonsense with sleight of hand. A giant bottle opener manifest beneath a large handkerchief is identified as his “big opening…I didn’t produce this for the awful pun, I did it for…” now a beer bottle appears. It’s ba-dump-dump vaudeville.

Turner interacts cheerily with audience. “Have we met before?” he asks one woman “Would you like to meet again?” Some reveals are just silly, others also clever. There’s a sweetness to unexpected disclosure. The finale is a horse doing magic.

Mentalist Daniel Harel has lectured on TEDx regarding the special techniques he uses, to some of which he openly alludes. An elegant figure, the artist presents not just poised, but surreptitiously aware.

“What are the odds we have the same telephone pass code?” he asks a volunteer. By dint of indirect questions and a recitation of innocuous numbers, the adept actually learns her pin (not said aloud) apparently conveyed by her unwitting signals.The Society of American Magicians will not allow disclosure, he tells us, but then, he’s not a member. (I doubt this.)

Harel turns the table on attendees by asking they intuit a number of which he’s thinking. Not only does this long form illusion wittily succeed, but information in a wallet he’d earlier given to a volunteer discloses a full physical description of the man who guesses the digits.

Headliner Jason Bishop normally performs one of the largest touring magic and illusion shows in the United States. He features challenge magic, close-up magic, manipulation magic, and unique illusions. Tonight he brings smaller scale, though no less surprising demonstrations.

Bishop opens with a wowza effect in which the sketchbook drawing of a bowling ball crossed with a real piece of duct tape drops heavily out of the closed pad as a real ball.The page then shows broken tape.A balance demonstration with ridiculously different objects is immensely artful. Poured into a glass, Gatorade will nonetheless not pour out when the glass is overturned- until Bishop wants it to. Patter is rapid, contemporary, droll and a tad dark.

Illusion featuring a steel-barred jail cell is marvelous; endless playing cards shoot from Bishop’s balletic hands into a box or over audience heads; with assistant Kim, even the performer’s Yorkshire terrier, Gizmo participates. I look forward to seeing a full solo act.

As always with magic, personality and framing are paramount.The roster of magicians on and off stage features both weathered practitioners and younger artists. All are accessible.

Close-Up Magicians: Harrison Kramer, The Mysterious Maks, Devlin, Tommy White, Moro Rotberg, Kevin Rhodehouse,
Michael Chaut, Mike Patrick, Peter Samelson, Eric Q, T.J. Tana

Seven birthdays and an anniversary are announced from the stage. It’s an entertaining way to mark occasion.

The Cutting Room 44 East 32nd Street (Between Park and Madison)
https://thecuttingroomnyc.com/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=13980873798&gclid=CjwKCAjwrbfWBhAeEiwAc2e6PvL9fOlgRisD3bd8eajpeWu9A09gOWvjyOtTatUyt1eu9A2mdKO0dRoCMbIQAvD_BwE

Monday Night Magic, is also now in residence at Monte’s Trattoria 97 MacDougal Street. It’s an Intimate, immersive close-up experience. Dinner and entertainment for just 44 guests.
Three more 2026 shows will be mounted at The Cutting Room.
November 23 – Thanksgiving Show
December 21 – Winter Holiday Show
December 28 – New Year’s Show
Tickets can be purchased into next year
VIDEO: CLICK HERE
INFO and TICKETS: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/mondaynightmagic/1980814/r/website?_gl=1*di7dce*_ga*MTUzODY5MDI3OS4xNzg5NTYyNjUx*_ga_446S6ME2ES*czE3ODk3NTQ0NTUkbzIkZzAkdDE3ODk3NTQ0NTUkajYwJGwwJGgzNTY4NTU2NzE.