Akron Life April 2023

AMISH COUNTRY

by Kelly Petryszyn

Abracadabra Madhrikan’s amazes with old-fashioned magic tricks.

photos provided by Madhrikan’s Theater of Magic

MADHRIKAN’S THEATER OF MAGIC

ishes, creating an unforget table illusion for the audience. “There’s a moment of com plete silence where they’re stunned because it defies all understanding of how it hap pened,” says marketing and sales manager Libby Pence. “Your mind boggles.” Since its opening seven years ago, the theater has been one of only a handful in the

country exclusively dedi cated to magic and one of even fewer magic museums. Madhrikan’s showcases classic and rare tricks from the late 1800s and early 1900s with modern performance flair. “We offer an experience of how magic was performed over 100 years ago,” says Pence. “We have a deep love of the history of magic.”

People gasp when they walk into the parlor-style 49-seat theater inspired by Devant’s Egyptian Hall theater in London that takes them back to the turn of the 20th century. It helps that his toric lithographs of famed Ohio magicians like Howard Thurston and Grover George are on display in the museum, along with a lithograph and costume from Virgil and Julie

The mascot moth trick, which prolific magician David Devant called one of his greatest tricks, has only been performed a handful of times in a century. Siegfried and Roy did it, and so does Madhrikan’s Theater of Magic in Berlin. A caped assistant evades a magician and then she van

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akronlife.com | APRIL 2023