Greg Wilson’s three plus hour At The Table lecture is fun, entertaining and stuffed to the gills with great magic and moves. I highly recommend this purchase for magicians of all levels.
The lecture starts off with a joke-mock 1970’s era advertisement for a magic VHS tape for the “Art of Card Throwing.” That is the only part of the lecture that should have been skipped. Then the lecture really starts and Greg Wilson, two time FISM winner, walks on stage with high energy and removes from his pocket a small folded up bag, big enough to hold a deck of cards when folded. He talks about the party he is going to have. He then unfolds the bag which is seen to be a long champagne bag, reaches in and throws streamers into the air. Then he reaches into the bag and slowly pulls out a full sized bottle of champagne. He immediately explains this very easy trick and sits down with At The Table host, Mike Hankins and launches into and explains his next trick in which he drops a sugar packet through a corrugated heat cuff from a cup of Starbucks coffee several times until it changes colors.
Wilson then polls the audience about what their “thousand timer” trick is – which is the trick that a magician’s immediate performs (and has done so a thousand times) when asked “Can you do a trick for me.” He then explains that he just invented a trick, has never performed it and dubs it his “one timer.” As soon as he starts the trick, with a sugar packet, he halts the performances and confesses that he forgot the set up and cautions the audience that they need to practice at least twice and moves on to another trick. This slip up is actually very endearing and is a demonstration of how a magician can move past a gaffe without being visibly confounded.
Wilson then borrows a fist-full of coins, calls on an audience to be a spectator and repeatedly does a coin vanish using his pant pocket as an impromptu topit, in a very entertaining routine, mainly because of Wilson’s quick wit and patter. When the spectator asks a question about the type of pockets you can use to perform the trick, Wilson breaks into an unplanned pick-pocket routine using Hankins as an accomplice. The spectator is unaware of all the moves that are happening, but the audience can see what is happening in real time and it is nothing less than absolutely hysterical. Wilson then teaches the very strong misdirection he uses to pick several pockets and explains “if you can’t hide it, highlight it.” Wilson is so smooth and adept at misdirection that it very entertaining to watch – and several times too.
Mike and Greg discuss Wilson’s show, Wizard Wars for a few moments and then he performs and explains Ringside, an impromptu and very visual coin/ring transposition. He then gives advice on performing tricks, changing them and testing them with an audience.
Wilson tells the audience that he has secretly removed 10,000 watches and that he gets caught every few hundred times. He tells the audience that he once broke a watch, but would not reveal the name of the person; just that his initials were “A. Schwartzenegger and his first name sounds like Flarnold.” He then teaches and discusses his approach to removing watches and demonstrates the art, step by step, with an audience member. As part of the routine, he has the spectator hide a coin in one hand, behind his back and then Wilson guesses, with 90% accuracy which hand the coin is in. Greg then explains how he is able to guess what hand the coin is in.