ADRIAN – As has happened to many other people, magician Stuart MacDonald found himself having to orient himself to a new way of working after the pandemic hit.
After everything came to a standstill, including his world tour, in early 2020 and after “twiddling my thumbs” for a while, Adrian native and internationally acclaimed magician developed an online show with a character he created: magician Richard Preston. Croswell Virtual Audience got to meet Preston later that year in a series of shows.
Preston has proven to be a huge hit with magic lovers far and wide.
“I’ve become one of the best virtual magicians in the world,” MacDonald said. “People from as far away as Korea were watching.”
Over time, there have been four different versions of the show. And then the CW network called, wanting MacDonald (and Preston) on “Masters of Illusion.” The recording aired last season.
Now, MacDonald, winner of numerous awards, including multiple International Brotherhood of Magicians and American Society of Magicians awards, as well as North American Champion and People’s Choice Awards at the Fédération Internationale des Sociétés Magiques (FISM, or International Federation of Societies of Magic in English). ), brings his – and Preston’s – act to a live audience in Croswell with two performances at 2.30pm and 7.30pm on Saturday, December 17.
Tickets are $25 and $30 for adults and $15 for students and can be ordered online at croswell.org or by calling 517-264-7469.
“The show will be a lot of fun not only for fans of Stuart MacDonald, but also for fans of Richard Preston,” said MacDonald.
This wording is deliberate, as in the two years since the character was created, MacDonald has seen Richard Preston take on a life of his own, so to speak.
“He’s way more famous than me,” he said.
Local audiences who saw ‘Richard Preston’ virtually in 2020 or who were at MacDonald Croswell’s last live show in 2019 will see very different magic this time.
“You haven’t seen this show,” MacDonald said. “You may have seen parts of it, but it’s a real twist.”
People will be able to see Preston’s latest magic act and some of MacDonald’s tricks. These include a new version of the mirror illusion he used to fool legendary magicians Penn & Teller on their TV show “Penn & Teller: Fool Us” a few years ago and some material from his appearance on “Masters of Illusion.”
There will also be plenty of new material, including “mind-reading effects that are cutting-edge,” MacDonald said, and audiences will even be able to do a trick right along with him.
When he first conceived of Richard Preston, MacDonald had a lot of fun doing research to develop the character because it involved an era he is very interested in: the 1950s and early 1960s.
Preston has quite a biography. A World War II hero turned magician, he was the world’s greatest entertainer of his time. Then in 1962, with the Cold War in full swing, he agreed to be cryogenically frozen so he could entertain the first colony on Mars in 2050.
But when so many things began to go wrong in the world in 2020, the world leaders collectively agreed to unfreeze Preston so that his prodigious entertainment skills could be used to help people overcome all difficulties. As a result, Preston has become a guy from 1962 in a world of the 2020s, and all the resulting anachronisms appear in his magic act.
The December 17 shows will bring him to the Croswell stage for the first time, complete with a few snippets of his story, including his appearance on the “Ed Sullivan Show,” him with the “Rat Pack” and so on.
“It will be a very funny show. Very funny and great for kids,” MacDonald said. “Even if you don’t get all the references, you’ll know enough about them.”
And because people who saw the act got to take that trip back in time, MacDonald said, every time he performed it, he found that it wasn’t just audience members who grew up in that earlier era who enjoyed the nostalgia, but that it brings two or even three generations together.
Why is magic so popular? MacDonald’s theory is that it triggers something innate in humans that has its roots in prehistoric days when early mankind saw things happening in nature that they created myths to explain.
“Magic taps into that prehistoric sense of wonder,” he said.
But even in people’s lifetimes, magical acts bring back memories.
“Everybody has a father or an uncle or a grandfather who said, ‘Do you want me to take a quarter out of your ear?'” he said.
To him, he was a telephone operator.
When he was a child, a magician who worked near his house approached him and asked if he wanted to see a magic trick.
“I still remember the name. It was called The French Drop,” he said. “I was 6 or 7 and I still remember.”
That old magic trick created a spark in him that has since brought him to television, online and live audiences around the world and given him a place in the pantheon of internationally known magicians.
Magic has changed a lot even over the years MacDonald has been playing. First, he said, the huge illusions that people associate with magicians like David Copperfield “seem to be disappearing” in favor of more intimate tricks. But “intimate magic can be just as powerful as that on a big stage,” he said.
He cited as an example one of his illusions, involving a cell phone, which turns out to be funny and poignant at the same time.
“It’s empowering for the magician, but it also engages the audience and evokes feelings, not just awe,” he said. “I’ve had people in the audience tell me they saw something special.”
As tickets for the December 17 shows sold out quickly, MacDonald encouraged those who want to see his show (and Richard Preston’s) to get their tickets soon. After all, he said, with the way his career is going these days, “it could be many years before I get a chance to go back to Adrian and do shows.”
If you go
WHAT THE: “The Magic of Stuart MacDonald”
WHEN: 2.30pm and 7.30pm Saturday 17 Dec
WHERE: Croswell Opera House, 129 E. Maumee St., Adrian
TICKETS: $25 and $30 for adults, $15 for students
HOW TO ORDER: Online at croswell.org or by calling 517-264-7469