Laugh, then be amazed

By Jerry Fink

Friday, Oct. 31, 2008 | 2 a.m.

A shattered leg slowed down the career of Irish illusionist Keith Barry, but he’s off and running now, headlining a fast-paced show at Planet Hollywood that is amazing fans.

He stuns audiences with mind games and memory tricks. He hypnotizes, mesmerizes and awes with sleight of hand, mental gambits and numbers games. He puts new twists on standard illusions, and mixes in his Irish charm and wit to amuse as well as amaze.

“Keith Barry, Hypnomagician” is a one-man show, but Barry makes the audience a big part of it. Using foam darts and plastic discs tossed into the audience to land on random volunteers, he gets dozens of people involved in his performance.

“I was in a bad accident that demolished my left leg just when my career was getting there,” Barry says, referring to the March 2007 crash in Ireland. He was driving down the highway when two other cars collided. One went airborne and flew into Barry’s vehicle.

“From the knee down disintegrated. They thought they were going to have to amputate, but luckily they saved it. But now I’m like Robo-Cop down there.”

After a year of physical therapy Barry, 32, is back on track.

His show at Planet Hollywood has a one-month run. He has tours in Ireland and England in December and January and plans to be back in Vegas in March for an extended run. “I’d like to have a permanent place on the Strip, bring my family over here and spend 10 years.” He’s also in negotiations for a TV special that was interrupted by the accident.

The production at Planet Hollywood shows off his multiple talents.

In an illusion performed away from the stage before the show, he asks a person to pick a card and not tell him. Barry then “accidentally” sets a piece of flash paper on fire between his thumb and finger. On the tips of his fingers appear the number 3 and a heart — for the three of hearts.

He asks another subject to think of an important time of day and to write it on a piece of paper seemingly hidden from him. Then he takes the subject’s watch and sets it to that time.

He draws laughter when he picks a random girl in the audience and asks her to stand and grab the waistband of her panties. He correctly guesses that her underwear is pink and was purchased at Victoria’s Secret.

“I don’t believe in mind readers or psychics and tell audiences that,” he says, “but then I do it anyway.”

The Vegas production is a selection of the best illusions from three touring shows. The show is part magic, part hypnosis, part psychology. And comedy is as important as the illusions.

“It’s a mixture of all different art forms. I wanted to create a new form of entertainment, a different type of show,” he says. “I want people to be amazed, but first I want them to laugh. I want to make them smile and then amaze them with some good magic.”

The fun for Barry began when he was growing up in Waterford, Ireland’s oldest city. His father worked for Waterford Crystal before starting his own crystal company and then a telecommunications company.

“I get my entertainment side from him,” Barry says. “He performed in a lot of show bands, singing as an amateur for many years. Even today you put a mike in front of him and he will grab it.”

Barry became interested in magic when he was a child and received a magic kit for Christmas and read a book on the subject.

“Here in Las Vegas, you can find a mentor to teach you magic, but in Ireland there are not that many magicians,” Barry says. “So after I got that magic set I just read every book I could find on magic, and then I started reading about hypnosis.”

His favorite magicians were David Copperfield and Lance Burton. He taped their TV specials and watched them hundreds of times.

Barry, who now lives in Dublin, began pursuing his career in earnest eight years ago. He stayed for a time in Los Angeles with his manager, knocking on doors for two years before he got a break — performing for Paris Hilton and her party sitting at a table in an L.A. nightclub.

“They were flipping out,” Barry recalls. “An MTV executive saw it and came up to me afterward and said they were filming a spring break special in Cancun, Mexico, and asked me to come along.”

The special did well, but didn’t open a lot of doors.

Then he performed at the 2004 Technology, Entertainment, Design conference in Monterey, Calif. “That was my live public debut. It was very nerve-racking. Bill Gates was in the audience.”

The conference landed him more engagements and a TV special, with promises of more. He was touring extensively in Ireland and England, and then the auto accident mangled his leg.

“When you take a year off people tend to forget about you,” Barry says.

Now he’s back and hoping to share the Strip with his two favorite magicians.

When you see him, wish him luck — just don’t tell him to “break a leg.”