Review: Rob Lake Magic With Special Guests The Muppets—Now You See It, Now You Don’t

Rob Lake’s résumé boasts a variety of fun facts: 1 million tickets sold over the course of his career, 80 million views on YouTube and Facebook (presumably combined), quarter-finalist status on America’s Got Talent, youngest magician in history to win a Merlin Award, resident headliner at the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas. Now he can add “performed on Broadway” to the list.

Lake’s magic show, with the cumbersome yet cheerfully literal title Rob Lake Magic With Special Guests The Muppets, was slated for a holiday season run at the Broadhurst Theatre. Owing to sluggish ticket sales and limited audience appeal—even with cameo appearances from Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzie, Gonzo, Rowlf, and Animal—the production will close this Sunday, November 16, after 20 previews and four performances. And what began as a perhaps brutally honest critique of an act geared mostly towards children has become a postmortem for a production that might, with a bit more magic, have been saved.

So, where did things go wrong? For starters, Lake isn’t a household name—not by the standards of a Broadway that’s become such an elitist pastime that tickets to non-musicals really only move when major celebrities like George Clooney, Denzel Washington, or Hugh Jackman are above the title. (With that in mind, please, for the love of God, see Liberation and Little Bear Ridge Road this winter.)

Presumably to offset Lake’s lack of name recognition, he and his producers struck a deal to bring in The Muppets, betting that they’d be the show’s biggest ticket driver. The Muppets are puppeteered live on stage, officially marking the Broadway debuts of Kermit and friends, although the production utilizes pre-recorded vocals by veteran Muppet artists Matt Vogel, Eric Jacobson, and Dave Goelz.

In theory, it was a genius idea: If you can’t get Gyllenhaal, get Gonzo. But in practice, there was no rhyme or reason for The Muppets to be there. The script—penned by Kevin J. Zak (officially credited with “additional material”)—has no story arc, so their presence is ornamental. Kermit does a trick with a “celebrity” guest (depending on how generously you define “celebrity”). Gonzo shoots himself out of a cannon. Miss Piggy goes shopping on Fifth Avenue. And Fozzie does some Broadway-themed stand-up from a box seat that would be better occupied by Statler and Waldorf (the omission of those two vicious old queens is especially egregious in a theater production). In the end, The Muppets have about 10 minutes of stage time in this 80-minute show.

As for the illusions themselves, Lake performs the same kind of sleight-of-hand that magicians have traded on for decades. He saws one woman in half and makes another one levitate atop a bed of water. He links together three wedding rings and turns a crumpled-up piece of white paper into a bright red rose. He asks audience members for random words, which later appear on a piece of paper inside a box that was locked and suspended midair an hour earlier. Pretty standard, tried-and-true stuff.

If this is your first time seeing these tricks performed live, no one will blame you for being impressed—something seemingly impossible is happening right before your eyes, and that’s pretty darn cool. But if you’re going to do the same illusions as every other magician, you’d better be the best at them, or at least have something new to offer. Lake isn’t, and doesn’t, certainly not compared to artists like David Copperfield or Doug Henning, whose more suspenseful renditions of many of these large-scale illusions are readily available on YouTube.

The absence of a director who could shape the evening and help Lake connect with us is felt throughout (Bethany Pettigrew is credited only as a creative consultant). Lake appears visibly uncomfortable delivering banter directly to the crowd, and his awkward, mistimed exchanges with his furry co-stars are even harder to watch. A sense of unpreparedness runs through the show: the cheap sets and overproduced music might pass muster on Paradise Island, but on Broadway, audiences are far less forgiving of an enterprise of such dubious quality.

What might have saved Rob Lake Magic… is the very thing the title promises but doesn’t deliver. A director with a theatrical flare—think Alex Timbers—could have helped Lake craft a throughline, pare down the filler, and integrate The Muppets in a way that felt purposeful, rather than a way to simply make your money disappear. A cohesive structure and a spark of personality from the leading man might have turned a strange evening into charming family entertainment. Instead, it merely serves as a potent reminder that even magic needs a little aristy. Oherwise, there’s no reason to play the music or light the lights.