Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants

　　1996 performance by actor/magician and David Mamet cast regular Ricky Jay, considered one of the greatest magicians alive and perhaps the greatest living authority on the history of magic. A fun show, combining bravura technique with a writerly passion for language, with Jay very much the seamy, slick character he often plays in Mamet's films. His voice, which flows steadily, is calm, softly rough-edged, self-amused and distinctly nontheatrical. His language leans toward anachronistic bombast, often taking the form of the ornate chains of words of the carnival barker, but he speaks it without archness. He is clearly a man in love with the patois of his profession, in all its aspects, and he is equally at home reciting a melodramatic broadsheet ballad about a card shark and his son, a translation of a poem by Francois Villon about how a gambler's money disappears, and the gritty lingo of the contemporary con artist. He lovingly recites the arcane slang that earlier generations used to describe the colorful cheats who pulled off their audacious hustles and cons, maintaining a running commentary that steeps each individual trick in a rich context of history, punctuated with period anecdotes, sketches of his favorite magicians, and descriptions of variations on classic subterfuges over the centuries.