Magician Teller brings his magic sensibility to TV, Vegas, Shakespeare: ‘Macbeth’ as ‘horror thriller’

LOS ANGELES – Teller, the silent half of Penn & Teller, has a habit of introducing magic and drama into unexpected places.\nAs a youngster he dared to stage his nascent act at a party for rowdy Cub Scouts (he was pelted with candy). As a young man he appeared at a Princeton University pub in front of rowdier students (he was pelted with beer).\nHe and Penn Jillette took their ironic form of magic, replete with the threat of danger as well as comedy, to generally irony-free Las Vegas, where they’ve been rewarded with a long-running show at the Rio hotel and casino.\nTheir Showtime series with the rebellious name – edited, it’s “Penn & Teller: (Naughty Word Meaning Baloney)!” – is in its fifth season of debunking any topic ripe for attack. Thursday’s episode on immigration includes illegal workers building a replica border fence and showing how to get past it.\nAnd how about this: Teller is fulfilling a long-held dream of staging Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” the way he believes it should be: as a “supernatural horror thriller.” He’s working with the Two River Theater Company in Red Bank, N.J., for an early 2008 debut.\nThe play is “dark and creepy and full of murders and supernatural events. It’s just great. The suspense just makes your hair rise when they’re murdering the king,” Teller said with infectious delight.\nHe vows tricks “that would do fine credit to any professional magic show, but they’re in the context of this terrifying play, so I think they should blow people’s heads off.” Examples include vanishing daggers and hands that are blood-soaked one moment, clean the next.\n“Pretty creepy,” he says, wearing a satisfied smile. His voice, the one audiences never hear, is pleasantly mild and reassuring.\nTeller is reveling in these graphic descriptions in the airy and chic hotel suite where he’s staying on a business trip from Las Vegas. A boyish-looking 59, he’s dressed meticulously in a crisp white shirt, black pants and elegant shoes.\nHis speech is precise as well, whether he’s recalling personal anecdotes (for the record, his parents were more heartbroken than he was about the Scout fiasco) or describing the first magic prop he owned, at age 5, purchased off the “Howdy Doody” TV show.\nIt consisted of a small cardboard tray that could hide a few pennies and hold a few more on top. When the tray was tipped, the coins would have appeared to magically multiply as the hidden ones slipped out.\n“That’s my earliest memory of a magic trick. And I don’t remember any period of my life thereafter in which magic was not a part of my life,” said the Philadelphia-born Raymond Teller.\nHis passion was fanned in high school by fate’s sleight of hand. It turned out Teller’s drama teacher, David Rosenbaum, also worked as a magician and wrote about the craft.