'Sleight' Play, Weighty Issue
Magic Thriller Illustrates How Illusion Can Become
Reality
by Don Nielsen
'Sleight of Hand', John Pielmeier's thriller that
opened at the Cort last night, offers the familiar
mystery-magic conventions, yet manages to put its
finger on some durable questions. What is illusion
and what is real? Are both interchangeable?
They can be if we *want* to believe, and that is the
secret of persuasion. In 'Hand', it is a magician who
creates illusions that seem real. In life, it could
be a politician, a churchman, a financier.
Pielmeier offers the sad truth that those who beget an
illusion, however unwittingly, can become its victim.
His three characters are a magician (Harry Groener),
his assistant (Pricilla Shanks) and the assistant's
confederate (Jeffery DeMunn). The assistant, sick of
being the magician's stooge, wants to turn the tables
and, for once, play a trick on her boss that he can't
see through. Her attempt introduces the evening's
central question: Who is fooling whom and how much
does any one of them realize it?
All this is played out with generous helpings of card
tricks and disappearing acts, gunplay and enough plot
twists to satisfy Col. Oliver North.
"Hand" is, on surface, an old-fashioned thriller with
good performances and wonderfully sinister sets and
lighting by Loren Sherman and Richard Nelson. It
offers more than just trickery, but its effectiveness
lies chiefly in the hand being quicker than the brain.