Description

In this forty-page booklet, the expert manipulator E. Brian MacCarthy shares the secrets to one of his most prized routines — the Cups and Balls. While the structure here will be broadly familiar to anyone who has studied this venerable effect, MacCarthy adds a novel twist that’s worth the price of the PDF alone, in which balls are made to change color after cups are placed over them. Otherwise, MacCarthy draws on the work of Robert-Houdin, Harry Blackstone, Sr., Eddie Joseph and more to offer a delightful sequence that aims to evoke the charm of Egyptian “Gali Gali”-style presentations, and is performed seated on the floor. The Chameleon Cups and Balls begins with an illustrated explanation of every sleight used in the routine, before the act is described in full, with exhaustive illustrations throughout. As MacCarthy himself notes, the effect “is presented at a terrific speed, and the audience have no chance to get bored.” He continues: “Whenever I have performed it, I have found that I conclude with the audience clamouring for more, which is as it should be.”