INTERVIEW: Todd Robbins invites you to the McKittrick for ‘Speakeasy Magick’
Photo: Todd Robbins is the host of Speakeasy Magick at the McKittrick Hotel. Photo courtesy of Stevan Keane / Provided by DKC O&M with permission.
When master illusionist Todd Robbins speaks, people listen. That is if they can hear his carefully chosen intonations over the barking of his dogs — a quartet of furry friendliness he calls the Four Pomeranians of the Apocalypse. Truth be told, the canines never disrupted the interview this writer had with the magician, but perhaps it was all a magic trick.
Robbins is a well-respected performer in the realm of magic and the macabre. He has appeared on TV and on stages around the world. Earlier in 2021, he presented a solo show at the Soho Playhouse that featured a participatory seance (is there any other type?), helping to usher in live theater once again to Gotham. Now he’s back at his old environs: the McKittrick Hotel in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan for a wonderfully bizarre and slightly off-key evening of illusion called Speakeasy Magick.
For the performance, Robbins plays the emcee, showing off his spirited antics at a small stage in the center of the room, and when his hosting duties are done, he unleashes a bevy of magicians on tables around the mysteriously lit room. These illusionists then perform tricks with decks of cards — called sleight of hand or prestidigitation for the unbeknownst — in dazzling displays of up-close magic. Robbins lords over the proceedings like a Gatsby figure, delighted to have denizens in his digs.
“There was a lot of trepidation when we started in August because a reset button had been hit in society, in popular culture, and we didn’t know who was going to come, if they were going to come and who they are now after going through what we’ve all gone through,” Robbins said about his return to Speakeasy Magick. “What we found since that time is people are eager for a normal, maybe it’s a new normal, to embrace life, and that’s a very glorious thing. It’s filled with a lot of hope.”
Robbins talked with Hollywood Soapbox before the rise of the Omicron variant, back in those carefree days of fall 2021 when the pandemic looked like it might be winding down a bit. Still Speakeasy Magick and the other theatrical offering at the McKittrick, an acclaimed production of Woman in Black, have soldiered on, into the cold winter of discontent.
“It really is the same form and function,” Robbins said about the pre-pandemic Speakeasy and the current iteration. “People started getting used to being in a room with other people and seeing things live. The results and the actions are the same, and it’s just been glorious. It’s been a triumphant return to a forgotten kingdom, as it were.”
The unusual and bemusing surroundings of the McKittrick add to audience members’ enjoyment of the show. They are escorted up a creaky elevator to another world and another time period. It’s almost as if they have stepped into an actual speakeasy with Prohibition curtailing the libations on the outside world, but with plenty of booze flowing in this protected watering hole. This “hotel” is also the home of Sleep No More, the immersive theater experience basked on Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
“It is so great that we are doing this at the McKittrick,” Robbins said. “It is such a magical, mystical, mysterious place that just makes our job so much easier. So many of the magicians that are working at Speakeasy Magick, my coven of conjurers, they make their money doing corporate work. They will go to a corporate event and make extremely good money doing the cocktail hour, walking around doing card tricks, and there is nothing about the environment. Even though they are beautiful environments, like the Plaza Hotel or the Rainbow Room or some place like that, there’s nothing about the hotel that really helps them make magic, and also they are not the main event. Usually it’s a Person of the Year award or corporate meeting of some kind, whatever the event. They’re just there to provide entertainment and amusement during the cocktail hour or the dinner hour or whatever. Sometimes it’s after-dinner entertainment, but still it’s entertainment that is a secondary feature. So they have to work very hard to pull people into their world and have a magical experience.”
The McKittrick is not like some boring corporate event. Audience members head down a nondescript street in Chelsea, not knowing if they are in the right neighborhood and unable to see a traditional theater marquee. In Robbins’ estimation, they are already “in the mood” to be transported, and that makes the magic even better.
“They’re coming to see something extraordinary, and it is our job to deliver it,” said Robbins, whose successful show Play Dead ran off-Broadway a few years ago. “And they come expecting it, hoping, and very open to the experience, and the fact is we have quite a bit of secrecy about it. People know it’s a magic show, but they don’t know exactly what it is. And the fun thing is they’ve never experienced magic quite like the way we do it. Even the magicians that perform have to adapt what they do a little bit because there’s a purity to it in the room and a focus from that audience that comes to that destination to be amazed in this wonderful, lovely, cursed hotel. So it works so much to our benefit to let them let go of the world outside of those walls and embrace the world that we created there in that lovely, lovely, creepy place.
Like a magic trick that amazes the spectator in mere minutes, Robbins bid his farewell and disappeared, back to his abode and the Four Pomeranians of the Apocalypse. But he can be found again; this writer knows a speakeasy where he likes to hang out.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Speakeasy Magick, featuring Todd Robbins, continues at the McKittrick Hotel. Click here for more information and tickets.
