David Szymanski
Michael Carbonaro returns to the Rio this week.
Monday, May 22, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Michael Carbonaro is always looking for the breaking point. A lifelong magician best known as the star and producer of the uproarious TV prank show “The Carbonaro Effect,” the 47-year-old entertainer says he is constantly amazed by what people will or will not believe is real, and finding that threshold has been the focus of the TV program and his live stage show, which returns to Las Vegas this week.
“Turning someone to stone, a car disintegrating into air, live baby chicks reconstituting themselves from what I call little chick flakes — it’s always been about what would it take for me to get someone on the hook and believe,” he said from his home in Burbank, California. “And I want it to come from a genuine place, so I always think about what would I need to see in order to believe what was happening.”
After embarking on his first live theater tour almost seven years ago, Carbonaro was invited to fill in for Penn & Teller at the legendary duo’s Rio Las Vegas theater last summer as they visited Australia, and he made the most of the opportunity. Now he’s back for another engagement, opening his updated production “Michael Carbonaro: Live in Las Vegas” at 8 p.m. on May 25. He has performances planned through July 2 and tickets are available via Ticketmaster.
“One of the great parts about getting to be in residency in Vegas last year was I got to really sit and look and explore all these routines, and take the time to adjust them to make them better,” Carbonaro said. “I had all afternoon to not get on a plane and fly to a new city and reset the show, but to take look at maybe this one moment that’s not getting the laughs as loud as it could, or see that not 100 percent of the audience is being fooled here, and why.”
In a way, he's also using his time in Las Vegas as a stepping stone to what could become his next big project. Carbonaro has been developing a new TV show in the last couple of years that combines those playful pranks with more traditional illusions, taking elements from his experiences onscreen and onstage, and adding extra dimension.
“I’ve had so many people come up and say, ‘I love the [TV] show so much, I wish I could be on it, but I can’t because I know who you are.’ I’ve realized that’s not a very good business model. You want the audience to come along with you,” he said. “So this new show answers that question — there’s still the sense of playing with pranks, but it’s more about bringing them onboard, almost like the live show.
“There are all these different perspectives going on because it’s part real magic show with a live audience, but you get to go backstage and see the antics behind the scenes. I think it's the next level of what magic could be on television.”
So there’s a good chance that when he’s making audience members vanish at the Penn & Teller Theater and finding that breaking point where we don’t know what to believe, Carbonaro is also cooking up content for this next TV show, and finding inspiration in Las Vegas that will lead him to that next level of entertainment.
“There’s an interesting difference between someone who doesn’t know they’re about to be fooled, which has this incredible energy and voyeuristic sensibility to it, and then this amazing, electric energy from people in your presence who know something is going to happen but they don’t know when,” he said. “I like getting to play with both. And on the TV show, I’m almost playing the straight man because I have to be realistic in the face of these outrageous things, where in the live show, I can show off and be part of the fun.”
