- OTHER MEDIA
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- SF Bay Guardian July 22, 2009 (Robert Avila)
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- Writer-performer Christian Cagigal has been studiously developing one
or another version of a one-man show at the Exit Theatre around his serious
chops as a magician. The shows are popular and long running in good part
because Cagigal is a strong showman whose feats of "mind reading"
are impressively perplexing. Now and at the Hour, his current and latest,
is also his most successful attempt yet at blending consistently dumbfounding
displays of prestidigitation and a dramatic narrative with a power of its
own. Rushing onstage lugging two large suitcases—whose odd antique
contents, swiftly unpacked and arranged by the performer, include an hourglass,
a metronome, and a wooden view master—Cagigal launches into a fitful,
melancholic rumination on time, memory, and the eternal return, grounded
in his description of growing up with his father, a Spanish-born mentally
disabled Vietnam vet, and his childhood retreat into imagination and solitary
pursuit of the magician's craft. The story carries inherent force—in
fact Cagigal the actor can push its emotional content unnecessarily hard—and
provides an intriguing context and theme for the mischievous, truly wowing
bits of audience-inducting magic he has concocted. The slightly bumpy transitions
around these feats still present a dramatic challenge, but Cagigal is rapidly
honing in on that magic moment when two distinct shows become an integrated
whole.
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