Mind Mangler: A Night of Tragic Illusion

The U.K. theater company Mischief specializes in comic disasters. Having already brought their large-scale fiascos The Play That Goes Wrong and Peter Pan Goes Wrong to Broadway, the troupe now sets its sights on a more intimate genre: magic. Henry Lewis plays an orotund but incompetent mentalist, and Jonathan Sayer is his deeply unconvincing audience plant. (The two of them also wrote the with Henry shields.) Ably directed by Hannah Sharkey, the show includes a lot of improvisational crowd work, and amid the comic bungling, a few actual tricks sneak in.