None of this makes the .357 Magnum–powered “Double-Bullet Catch” that ends the current show, or anything else that takes place in either of the two acts, less amazing. That’s because the key to magic — and, despite any contrary notions, Penn & Teller do perform magic tricks, make no mistake about it — is that no matter how many times you watch the same routine, you never really see how it’s done. The magic is in concealing the trick. The rest is just window-dressing. Shtick. Smoke and mirrors. Scantily clad women “assistants” and lions, tigers, and bears. The Wizard of Oz.

And therein lies the true twisted genius of Penn & Teller. All magicians come to the stage with basically the same bag of tricks wrapped in various layers of disbelief-suspending show-biz production, but Penn & Teller up the ante by stripping away the usual trappings of a big-budget magic show. More important, they pretend to let the audience in on how the tricks are done. There are no shapely Dorothies or rabbits in hats to distract you, just the workaday stagehands who wheel out various props and sweep away debris between acts, and an odd couple of guys in gray suits doing their thing. And, well, a bunny that may or may not end up in a wood chipper. The Penn & Teller shtick — and it’s a big shtick — is that they’ve got no shtick.

The 25th Anniversary Tour show, which runs a little over two hours, is divided into two parts, with a short but entertaining intermission. (Penn, after talking circles around the audience about the nature of scientific inquiry, invites spectators to pay 25 cents for the privilege of coming up on stage during the break to inspect a barrel that he popped out of in the first act.) The production opens with Penn and Teller taking the stage concealed within giant, inflated Penn & Teller puppets. Then they perform a simple trick where the big guy tosses a deck of cards in the air and fires a bullet through a card selected by an audience member and accidentally punctures the little guy’s big-puppet suit. Got it? Okay, but the real trick has nothing to do with the cards, even though Penn’s aim is indeed true. Because, while everyone’s wondering whether he hit the correct card or not, the focus shifts to who, if anyone, is really inside the giant puppets. I’m not gonna give away the punch line, so to speak.

Penn & Teller never give it all away either. In fact, it’s the crucial balance between what’s hidden and what’s revealed that makes the show work. Using yet another audience member, Penn (with Teller’s able assistance) offers a knife-throwing demonstration in which all is revealed to everyone except the hapless volunteer. It’s a trick with no magic. But it has a finely honed point, namely that behind every skillfully executed feat of magic is nothing more than a mundane series of deceptions designed, at least in part, to make the audience feel stupid on some level. Penn drives the point home at the end of the routine by menacingly imploring viewers to keep their mouths shut about what just transpired.

The best parts of the show are, like the knife-throwing routine, the feats that come with a somewhat subversive subtext that’s often as compelling and important as the trick itself. By way of introducing a routine that has the silent Teller magically mending a long swath of polyester cloth that has been cut and then tied together, Penn, without mentioning him by name, pokes fun at a certain minor media celebrity who maintains that he has the God-given power to bend spoons. He then adds that Penn & Teller have opted to move “out of the field of magic and into the field of religion — it’s a lateral move.” The trick itself is rather mundane, but the way it’s framed is both amusing and provocative.

Similarly, there’s a flag-burning routine that involves a clever bit of sleight of hand in the second act. The bit is actually a clever metaphorical twist on the old trick where an object (in this case a cloth) is placed in a paper cone, a wand is waved over it, and the cone is revealed to be empty. Penn & Teller replace the cloth with an American flag, the paper with a copy of the Bill of Rights, and the magic wand with a lighter. The flag may be gone in a fiery flash — in fact, using the Chinese “Bill of Rights” (a clear piece of acetate), Penn later reveals that Teller has secreted the flag in a hidden pocket on the back of Penn’s jacket — but the Bill of Rights remains intact. Of course, the pair never do explain how the flag ends up attached to that pole on the corner of the stage. That’s the magic part.

The performance reviewed here took place after the Phoenix Arts section had gone to press.