The Devil's Daughter

Dating the spawn of Satan would have obvious disadvantages (meeting the parents would be hell), but for certain enterprising individuals it could be a golden opportunity. Dr. Faustus, for example, might appreciate the chance to get in good with his creditor by cozying up to the daughter, and if she should confer any occult powers on her overreaching beau, well, so much the better.

The hero of Chicago playwright Bailey’s new “family fantasy magical experience” is, like Faustus, a magician, but when he falls for the devil’s daughter, nothing as compelling or complicated as ambition enters his cheerfully empty head. He meets the girl—who surfaces from the underworld against her father’s wishes, à la Disney’s The Little Mermaid—at his aunt’s nightclub, where he performs tedious, charisma-free versions of tricks we’ve seen dozens of times before (Houdini’s straitjacket escape, the ol’ fake guillotine, etc.). And wouldn’t you know it, the act needs a new girl to saw in half after the previous magician’s assistant runs off with a pro baseball player. Before you can say “abracadabra,” our prestidigitator and Lucifer’s little girl are matched up, both onstage and off.

The task of telling this ill-conceived, ungainly story (why, exactly, does she have to be the devil’s daughter?) falls to director Hymen, who successfully manages to conceal how the various magic tricks are pulled off but somehow saps them of their wonder and danger. Part of that has to do with the cast members, whose peppy but clumsy acting undermines whatever skill they have at legerdemain.