Vinny DePonto (Photo: Jeff Lorch)

Mindplay

By Julia Polinsky

There are two kinds of people: those who are willing to be enchanted by magic shows, and those who are all about figuring it out. Whether or not enchantment works for you, spending 90 minutes with Vinny DePonto's Mindplay will be a delight. 

DePonto delivers patter like a showman, introducing the illusions and weaving a narrative thread through, in between, and around them. Likable and engaging, he warns that he'll be using audience members for participation but there are no plants, and you believe him.

You believe him equally when he speaks of the past, his family, himself growing up, and talks not only of personal memory but of memory palaces, a technique for using the mind efficiently to memorize huge swaths of information. Demonstration: Complete Shakespeare, and that's all that need be said about that. (No spoilers!)

Mindplay blurs the line between illusion and reality - as what does not, nowadays? The show feels like a magic/comedy routine more than a play; there's a slight, charming vibe of his magic shows having been polished in family living rooms and maybe the occasional bar mitzvah.

The set seems blah at first - a curtain painted with the tag line, "What's on your mind?", a desk, a chair -- but about halfway through the show, it opens up to a splendidly 3D metaphor for memory: walls of safe deposit boxes, ranked, overlapping, grey. Memories pop out of them, get slammed into them, rattle around in them.

Vinny DePonto (Photo: Jeff Lorch)

Safe deposit boxes aren't the only old-school props in Mindplay; DePonto uses a dial phone, a slide projector, cassette players, answering machines, all tools from the past that he looks barely old enough to remember. He does joke about the younger people in the audience having to have these things explained, and gets a decent laugh about it.

More than laughs, though, make Mindplay a hybrid magic show/play. The "play" part comes in scripted sections (Josh Koenigsberg is credited as a co-writer) that explore the mind and memory. DePonto does not spare himself, his own anxiety, or his memories, and explores his own mind as well as those of audience members who bravely participate in the mentalist tricks.

Audience members are not required to participate, although they can fill out a paper and slip it into a "what's on your mind?" envelope before the show. DePonto fishes around in a bowl of envelopes to make random-seeming choices for participants? victims? helpers? Whatever. DePonto also makes a point of saying that, if you're afraid of what Mindplay might reveal, you are welcome to step out. Nobody does, possibly because he also points out that the outside world is hardly free of mental tricks and manipulation.

Direction from Andrew Neisler makes DePonto's performance seem effortless. Sibyl Wickersheimer creates terrific scenic design. Lighting (and evocative shadows) from Christopher Bowser, and Kathy Rivuna's sound design make Mindplay more than just another magic show.

 

Vinny DePonto (Photo: Chris Ruggiero)

In a post-truth world where marketing powerfully affects us, it's a pleasure to know that Mindplay is playing tricks. That said, at one point, DePonto asks the entire audience to think of a single idea or concept and focus on it. He stands on stage, looks out at the audience, thinks, and absolutely nails mine, the exact word. It's almost enough to make you think he's actually reading your mind. Maybe.

Mindplay

At the Greenwich House Theater

27 Barrow St, New York

Through April 20

Tickets: tickets@greenwichhousetheater.com