Miles of Mystery

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7279, 5 October 1933, Page 10

Miles of Mystery

DANTE, MAGICIAN ENTHRALLS Mystery was tho keynote of a splendid entertainment presented by the noted magician Danto before an exceedingly large audience at the Opera House last evening. With a worldwide experience and reputation, Dante has come to Palmerston North with a repertoire of vast proportions. His mysteries range from apparently simple slight of hand, tricks to presentations of a more ambitious character requiring the assistance of elaborate equipment and a .number of helpers. But in it all the thrill of tho mysterious is completely maintained. Dante manipulates cards and red celuloid balls with his fingers with dexterity. He makes them appear from the void and disappear again with comparaticv ease and leaves one wondering. Pigeons and ducks fly out of empty hats, followed by a sucking pig and young goat and all at a speed that leaves one bewildered. The entertainment opened with a veritable fanfare of these tricks to be followed by a series of box or cabinet mysteries in -which Dante makes his assistant disappear and re-appear with the same ease as the animals and birds. These cabinet mysteries were of a. wonderful range and were conducted in the midst of appropriate settings. There were some lucky members of the large audience when tho magician produced some two dozen or more glasses of ale out of a seemingly empty barrel. They were invited to declare as to the quality of the beverage and found it to their satisfaction. The audience was asked to participate in other of Dante ’s tricks much to their enjoyment. A real thriller was presented in the act involving the sawing of a lady in a box, in half, and when a la,rge trunk was lowered from tho roof where it had been suspended over the heads of the audience all the evening, and it was found to contain a lady who was last seen tied in a box on the stage, everybody wondered. For two and ahalf hours, the company reeled off one mystery after another without a pause except for the interval. It is a show that can be recommended, magicians of the calibre of Dante being few and far between. A splendid bill of fare concluded with an act in a Chinese setting, in which the spectacular was combined with the mysterious. Dante is assured of an overflow audience for his final performance to-night.