Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends by Penn Jillette

Penn & Teller have conjured success with a new hybrid entertainment: a blend of old and new magic tricks spiked with metaphysics and macabre humor. Or, as Penn says in his machine-gun delivery during the show, ``We're two eccentric guys who've learned to do a few cool things.''Īt a time when almost anything and everything, with the exception of serious drama, seems to play on Broadway. So, what are these two doing at the Ritz Theatre, where Dame Sybil Thorndike and Alfred Lunt used to play? Tying each other up in straightjackets, locking each other in tanks of water, eating fire.

``Yeah, everybody we like is dead,'' seconds Teller (who uses just that name), with a polite snap of his deck. ``I still have never seen a Broadway show I like, and there are very few comedians we like.'' ``We hate everything,'' says Penn, riffling his cards. These guys just don't like to be classified. ``If you look back on the history of sitcoms, you'll end up with more good stuff than vaudeville did.'' And forget about calling them magicians, or comedians, or even Broadway material - all of which they have been ever since their Obie-award-winning comedy-magic show moved uptown after 22 sold-out months Off Broadway. ``Nah,'' says Penn Jillette, the taller, more outspoken half of the act. Well, also the only vaudeville team playing on Broadway.Įxcept that Penn and Teller don't like being called ``vaudeville.'' The way someone else fiddles with a pen, these guys shuffle cards.īut then, these guys are Penn and Teller - ``Penn & Teller'' as they're officially known - one of the hottest vaudeville teams playing on Broadway. serving science and human curiosity, inspiring philosophic speculation and making the fainthearted shudder.THEY'RE shuffling cards. When Jillette visits the Mutter Museum, a collection of medical oddities connected with the College of Physicians in Philadelphia, his desire to join theĬollection is as touching as it is creepy: ''Nothing would please me more than spending my afterlife in a glass case. The scams with surprisingly heartfelt essays about his cranky personal obsessions. So Penn Jillette - the voice of the duo - wisely intersperses Still, their brilliant brand of carny-inspired hucksterism does not always translate to the page.

More than, say, a hotel sewing kit or a couple of soda cans (shaken, not stirred). The pranksters make it easy for even the most magic-challenged to be annoying: their tricks often require nothing How to Play in Traffic'' is filled with instructions for nasty little pranks to scare and annoy your loved ones.

Ike their last two books, ''How to Play With Your Food'' and ''Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends,'' ''Penn & Teller's

Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends by Penn Jillette