Vitaly Beckman is a very talented magician.  Many of the effects he designs himself and those he created are highly deceptive and impressive, even to a fellow magician.  He focuses on paper magic and does it well.  He combines multiple effects into smooth stories that work well.  He starts and ends his act with impressive reel magic.  Sorry to use Penn and Teller confuscation but he also fooled them with a terrific animated paper photographic effect that he performed here.  The program does not list a director and that is his greatest weakness.

Many times the audience was two or three beats behind his illusions, making him seem to beg for applause too often.  In other words his magic was good, but his staging was often too weak.  Because his magic is subtle he needs to punch up his pacing and better understand effective presentation.  I hope he looks into a good magic staging director to take his work to the next level.

The greatest effect of his performance is his work with audience collected driver’s licenses.  Though I believe I know how he does it, it is extremely effective and hard to describe.  He wipes off pictures from the government laminated official documents.  He moves photos from one to another and then combines them on another.  He then ties back to a previously selected celebrity and has a good finish.  This is an impressive illusion and worth the price of admission.  If you get a chance to see the show, please go.  Hope that before you see it he hires a good director and it will be even better.

As always you can find more at http://www.walterthinnes.com and on Twitter @walterthinnes

NEXT: Rumination on the Blue Ridge Parkway