Legendary magic duo and the undisputed Kings Of Sin City Penn & Teller are finally making their Australian debut. No fooling.
Having already postponed the tour twice – once for emergency surgery and the other for a pandemic – Penn & Teller take over venues around the country in June and July to give Australian audiences a live performance of their mind-bending magic.
“I just love Australia,” Teller says.
“I learned to scuba dive in Cairns, I’ve eaten gelato at Circular Quay and enjoyed Shakespeare at the Opera House, I’ve scouted an underwater TV special near Melbourne, I’ve been bug-eyed at MONA and some of my dearest friends live there so it’s about bloody time we brought our show Down Under, don’t you think? It’s once in a lifetime! See you in winter! What? It’s winter in June?” Jimmy Fallon called them “the greatest performing duo in showbiz” and it’s not hard to see why. For nearly 50 years, Penn & Teller have consistently pushed the boundaries of entertainment, physics and good taste to keep audiences on the edge of their seat.
Along the way, Penn Jillette and Teller (that is his legal name) have redefined the art of magic and created an overarching legacy that shadows those of Harry Houdini, David Copperfield or Criss Angel.
From humble beginnings in Philadelphia, Penn & Teller were introduced to each other in 1975 by mutual friend Weir Chrisemer and the trio began performing together as The Asparagus Valley Cultural Society from the late 1970s until 1981, when Weir left.
Experiencing further success as Penn & Teller on multi-year runs in San Francisco and Los Angeles during the early ‘80s, the duo opened their self-titled Off-Broadway show in 1985, which catapulted them into national notoriety.
Over the following years, Penn & Teller quickly enhanced their reputation as the bad boys of magic: in 1987 they appeared as three-card monte scammers in the Run DMC video clip for ‘It’s Tricky’; in 1989 they released their first film ‘Penn & Teller Get Killed’; 1990 saw Penn drive an 18-wheeler over Teller in their NBC TV special ‘Don’t Try This At Home’; and in 1991 they made a return to Broadway for ‘Penn & Teller Rot In Hell’.
They made their Las Vegas debut in 1993 at Bally’s and throughout the decade appeared on countless popular TV shows, including ‘Friends’, ‘Home Improvement’, ‘Sabrina The Teenage Witch’, ‘The Drew Carey Show’ and ‘The Simpsons’.
In 2001, Penn & Teller began their historic residency at Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, where they still perform today, earning them the lauded title of the longest-running headline act to play the same Las Vegas hotel. The best tricks from this residency will certainly be brought to Australia for crowds Down Under – which ones, exactly? You'll have to come along and find out for yourself.
For a couple of guys who have made their careers in magic, they have also devoted themselves to debunking common untruths and demystifying the craft.
As showmen, Penn & Teller never insulted the intelligence of their audiences by claiming to possess any real magical ability, as Penn told CBS in 2015:
"The people who claim these powers are liars, cheaters, swindlers, rip-offs," said Penn. "And the tricks themselves are evil, immoral – and I know how to do them all!"
Instead, Penn & Teller have always been transparent that the tricks they do are just that, tricks. Both libertarians and affirmed sceptics, they have been an intellectual force against pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, religion, the paranormal and even physics, most notably through their award-winning documentary series ‘Bullsh.t!’
And for anyone who thinks they can bullsh.t a bullsh.tter, their current TV show ‘Penn & Teller: Fool Us’ gives amateur and professional magicians the chance to star as part of Penn & Teller’s hit Las Vegas show, if they can bamboozle the pair with a trick.
You’d be forgiven for thinking the secret to Penn & Teller’s success is friendship; that’s just another sleight of hand pulled while you were looking the other way.
For all their onstage chemistry and shenanigans, Penn & Teller are not close friends, rather they have enjoyed a purely professional relationship seeded in mutual respect that has yielded one of the most lucratively successful partnerships in entertainment.
In 2022, Penn & Teller will celebrate 47 years of working together.
Still, there is just one trick left for them to reveal, one last truth to expose: how the hell they got away with not playing Australia in all that time! Explain that, misters Penn & Teller. Go on – fool us.
Penn & Teller Australia 2022 Tour Dates
1-11 June – Sydney Opera House14-18 June – Arts Centre Melbourne
22 June-3 July – Queensland Performing Arts Centre
