By Marilyn Lester***For those suffering nightmares from too many viewings of Nightmare Alley, Mind Mangler: A Night of Tragic Illusion, is the cure for you, a zany hoot and upending of the mentalist “trade.” The show is part of the “Goes Wrong” franchise, the 
brand birthed by the Mischief Theatre. And just about everything in The Mind Mangler, at New World Stages, does go wrong, as the Mangler tries to read minds, nay, manipulate and control them—and this means you, dear audience member. This is a production chock full of prime shtick, worth losing your mind over.
The Mind Mangler is Henry Lewis and his audience-member plant and foil is the hilarious Jonathan Sayer. Both are founding members of Mischief Theatre; with Henry Shields the three pulled in a few other fellow students of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in 2008 and began their company of actors who believe deeply in serious fun. They created The Play That Goes Wrong in 2012 and the rest is history. 
Brand and personas in tact, The Mind Mangler, written by Lewis and Sayer, plays to strength: Lewis the pompous tragic clown with imposing figure and stentorian voice, and Sayer the delightfully bumbling, perpetually flummoxed sidekick. Fans of the Goes Wrong series will eat it up with a tasty spoon, especially since audience participation is the key to success for this show.
That engagement is immediate. As tickets are checked and Playbills are handed out, patrons are asked to disclose a deeply hidden secret and their name on a ballot provided. These are collected nonstop by stage hands and deposited in two onstage bowls that are “in plain sight” at all times. As a side note, the group of stage hands working for The 
Mind Mangler deserve recognition; without their assistance, the show might not go on—or it might with lots more going wrong in earnest.
Lewis has the keen timing that all great comics possess. As he blabs out his own array of secrets through the show, his life failures are epic, but never maudlin, which is why we can laugh uproariously at his crumbling act, divorce, homeless state and a good deal more. There’s actually a dramatic arc throughout the show, which is exposed in a surprising reveal at the end,
Sayer, the audience plant, is also superb in his timing, perhaps the best of the Mischief troupe in this skill, a general must-have for slapstick and the kind of mischief the Goes Wrong folks conjure in humor broad and subtle, if not ironic. Sayer appears at various times in t-shirts bearing “Audience Member,” “Different Audience Member” and so on. Meanwhile there are real audience members who sometimes are so good and so responsive you have to wonder if they too are plants. They’re routinely called upon in the Mangler’s act, volunteering to be 
hypnotized or to guess the location of a $20 bill in a three-card Monty riff. That bit is played beautifully; most guess correctly and get to keep the cash, but the last guesses the wrong glass—too bad. And then there comes the guessing of secrets, so cleverly conceived and played you could almost believe that the Mind Mangler is the real deal. Such is the level of writing and execution of the Mangler action. An honest-to-goodness “real” trick is part of the repertoire in the damaged-and-restored newspaper illusion (a classic), a gambit that adds irony to the Mangler’s bumbling.
But for all its wonders, and there are many, the two-hour show can lag at times. It’s well-directed by Hannah Sharkey, but can use tightening none the less. Or perhaps more real 
tricks salted among the goes wrong type (there was also a guillotine illusion that thrilled). Still, The Mind Mangler, with all its moving parts, is good goofy fun, the kind we can sure use more of these days.
Mind Mangler: A Night of Tragic Illusion. Through March 3, 2024, at New World Stages (340 West 50th Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues). Two hours, one intermission. www.mindmanglernyc.com
Photos by Pamela Raith
