Teller, Casting a Dark Spell

Accustomed, too, to the sophisticated technical resources of Las Vegas and Hollywood, Teller was not immediately on the same wavelength as the show-on-a-shoestring theater people. "Teller didn't seem to understand," Posner says with a laugh, "that an eight-hour design meeting isn't the norm."

Soon, however, thanks to Teller, the staff was being supplemented by an unusually experienced roster of helpers: a magic consultant, Matthew Holtzclaw; a mask and special-effects makeup designer, Frank Ippolito, whose credits include "Pirates of the Caribbean"; a New York composer, Kenny Wollesen, who created a cool percussive score. A cutler was even hired, to custom-forge the swords of the Scottish nobles.

It would be unfair to give away any of the tricks Teller has devised for this "Macbeth." Suffice to say that some of the most famous illusions associated with the history of magic acts have been adapted here. Which is to say that some characters vanish and some objects levitate.

When Teller had to return to Vegas during "Macbeth" rehearsals, it fell to Holtzclaw, a New York actor, playwright and magician, to train the actors -- to get them comfortable with the techniques of illusion-making. "The question was, how do you do intense emotion while hitting these specific marks, to make these tricks happen?" Holtzclaw explains.

For an actress as experienced with Shakespeare as Norris, the technical rigors of this "Macbeth" added a level of challenge, sometimes arduous, sometimes downright fun. In one particularly famous scene, Lady Macbeth has some serious guilt issues to deal with, manifested in her terror at an inability to wash spots of blood off her hands. Fittingly, Posner and Teller's "Macbeth" makes the moment especially vivid and horrifying, with the application of heaping amounts of you-know-what. "We tried like nine different sprayers," Norris recalls of the efforts to approximate those damned spots.

Norris and Peakes say that although they were excited by the buzz around the production -- "This might be the biggest show I've ever done," the actress avers -- they harbored some initial concern that this not turn into merely a "Magic Macbeth." Once they heard from Teller himself, that worry subsided. "And Kate and I," Peakes adds, "aren't the kind of people who would have a show taken from us."

It would, it seems, mortify Teller if anyone thought he was anything but absolutely devoted to the sanctity of the material. Even so, in deference to the reputation of Penn & Teller as irreverent debunkers of superstition, he says that he invokes the title of the play -- considered bad luck by actors -- inside the theater at every opportunity. And his partner, Penn Jillette, he notes, broke another taboo by sending Teller a bouquet of peacock feathers on opening night.

True to his devotion, Teller frequently went to Shakespeare's defense when Posner sought to cut lines for speed. "Aaron is a nut for pacing," Teller says, adding that he drew the line when Posner and Peakes wanted to eliminate an allusion in a speech by Macbeth to a fountain of blood. It was too evocative to cut, Teller argued. "And I'm a nut for imagery," he explains.

The visual touches in this "Macbeth" are certainly a hallmark. But the actors are convinced that it's still Shakespeare through and through.

"A lot of people are going to come for the magic," says Peakes. "And stay for the story."