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Until I remember a moment very similar to that of an earlier version of "Secret", presented at Broadway in 2017 by the Atlantic Theater Company. The current incarnation of this series, directed by Andrew O'Connor and Andy Nyman (and written by them and Mr. Brown), is an expert in creating the most essential of the theatrical illusions, namely that all we see happens for the first time. The show seems rather more at home – and strangely, more intimate – in a Broadway palace than in a house several times smaller.
Its production design – designed by a team consisting of Takeshi Kata (set), Ben Stanton (lighting), Jill BC Du Boff (sound) and Caite Hevner (projections) – offers a feeling of near-nakedness, without visible screen or conveniently multi-pattern furniture for concealment purposes. And Mr. Brown's elegant suits – a dark three-piece for the first act, and a white tie and tail for the second – are far too well fitted for tough sleeves.
Mr. Brown is part of the contemporary school of mentalists and magicians (including Penn and Teller and the great Ricky Jay, who died last year) who practice what one might call a disclosure to half full. This means that they are not going to tell us how they do what they do, but they will admit that their art is nothing strange.
As a showman, Mr. Brown has nothing of the smarminess of the conjurers or carnivals of Las Vegas. It does not feel synthetic in its sweetness and jokes for the public are cautiously on the sunny side of insults. (The most damning indictment arrives early, via a video clip that turns us all into sheep who happily bleat.)
We all have secrets, he says. And he talks about the one he kept until the age of 31: he is gay. So what? you can think. And that, he continues, was the general answer to his release. The secrets are what keeps us all uselessly "trapped in our own head". In other words, he is really like us.
Again, if that's the case, how does Mr. Brown manage to get out of the air – after asking some innocuous general questions – the secret shared by a Scottish couple sitting in the mezzanine? Or how about what the mature woman at a few ranks had planned with a certain male friend?
And what about the extraordinary finale in which six members of the public help Mr. Brown reveal the secret that gave the title to this show? Like the final scene of a Shakespearian novel, she interweaves a variety of disparate and disparate elements into the appearance of cosmic harmony. And God help me, I found myself in tears of joy at a magic show.
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