Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants
Written and performed by Ricky Jay. Directed by David Mamet. Set design by Kevin Rigdon. Lighting by John Ambersone. At the Market Theater through November 24.

" This game is as crooked as the Mississippi River. "

" Yes, but it’s the only game in town. "

The origins of that little story and much more are revealed in Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants, which is ostensibly a show about card tricks (those " assistants " being a standard playing deck). The card tricks may be the stuff and substance of this short, two-act, one-man show (revised from an Off Broadway hit of a couple of seasons ago), but the art is in that flow of stories, the smooth physical moves (digital and otherwise), and the personal charm that emanates from Ricky Jay — what magicians call " misdirected attention, " without which there would be no " magic, " as anyone who’s seen Penn & Teller can tell you.

Jay makes his entrance at the Market Theater from behind a crimson curtain at the back of a small, Victorian-styled library with ceiling-high bookshelves — the kind of " parlor " where his kind of tricks were first practiced. And from that moment on, he’s the embodiment of the con man — someone in whom you place your confidence. He recites a bit of ancient gambling-man doggerel and spreads his 52 assistants on a green-felt table top, which is tilted forward for better viewing. Unlike Penn & Teller, his art is intimate, not bellowing. (A word to the wise: the Market is small, but seating is general admission, and you will want to get up close.)

Audiences may know Jay as a character actor from his films with David Mamet (who directed 52 Assistants) or as the porn-flick cameraman in P.T. Anderson’s Boogie Nights. He’s of average height, bearded, balding, with a soft, well-modulated voice, a precise delivery, and an indefinable sangfroid that can come off as warm and engaging or reptilian cool, depending on the theatrical demands of the moment.

Audiences may also know some of the stories in 52 Assistants from Jay’s several books, collections of magic, sleight-of-hand, and side-show arcana, the most recent of which is the lovingly bound and illustrated Jay’s Journal of Anomalies (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The stories range from those about his contemporary heroes and mentors Dai Vernon and Charlie Miller to that of Matthew Buchinger, the 17th-century " Little Man of Nuremberg, " an " armless and legless musician, conjurer, and calligrapher " who was one of the early practitioners of a conjurer’s trick called " cups and balls " — known more popularly these days as the shell game.

Jay also demonstrates several variations of three-card monty, as well as the niceties of card control, false dealing, and card-stacking, of shuffling a deck, of dealing from the bottom of the deck and dealing from the middle of the deck. At one point he flings a card so hard and fast it slices into the " pachydermous " outer rind of a watermelon — and sticks (though it took several tries the night I saw him).

Jay creates the impression that he’s letting you in on his secrets without ever really giving anything away. He allows that he’s a decent card counter with a " pretty good memory, " and he even demonstrates — but as he reels off endless sequences of numbers, it’s hard to believe you can keep all that stuff in your head while you’re dealing five hands of poker. Like Penn & Teller, Jay in the end reveals only that there is a trick, and the requisite skills, without necessarily revealing the how. At one point, he deals cards to two volunteers from the audience — a game of gin, a game of blackjack, a game of poker. He shows the effect of cheating via card cutting but mentions only in passing, " You must cut at the right spot — which is another lesson for another time. "

In addition to taking volunteers on stage, he steps into the audience to work the crowd ( " It’s important to remember these cards; otherwise I have an effect without a plot " ). In one extended bit with a single volunteer, he gets the joint jumping with laughter through the use of wind-up toys. He can charm with warmth and ad-libs ( " Were you born under a portrait of Balzac? " he asks one volunteer) or fix you with his lizard stare as he recites verse. I wouldn’t want to ruin his jokes, or his evocation of sleight-of-hand history, by giving away punch lines. One oration is introduced as " a brief philosophical discussion on the nature of cheating " ; another story is concluded with a dry aside: " I’m not obligated to conjure with poultry. "

Theater is a confidence game too, and Ricky Jay earns our willful suspension of disbelief even as he encourages our skepticism ( " I know what you’re saying, " he repeats in one extended sequence of tricks). Maybe that’s why I was on the edge of my seat when he began one story: "  ‘Your daddy was a gambling man,’ my mother said to me . . .  "

Issue Date: November 1-8, 2001