Everyone’s a critic: ‘Houdini’ gives play thumbs down – musical play performed on Harry Houdini’s death anniversary
Ken Feder
The anniversary of the death of Ehrich Weiss, better known as Harry Houdini, has once again passed without any contact from the other side. Most know that Houdini and his wife had agreed that whoever died first would attempt to contact the survivor. Houdini joined the choir invisible on October 31, 1926, and his wife began the wait for a secret message the two had agreed upon and that only she, Houdini, and Houdini’s brother knew. She never heard that message and declared before her death in 1943 that the experiment had been a failure.
Since his wife’s death, every year on October 31, others have attempted to contact Houdini, alas without any demonstrable success. The attempt last year had a special significance in Connecticut, where a musical play about Houdini’s life was in a pre-Broadway run at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam. The show had received mediocre reviews and, perhaps in an attempt to boost public interest, the “Official Houdini Seance” was held in the theater at midnight after the October 31 performance. The goal, of course, was to contact the great magician.
The seance was conducted by medium Elaine Kuzmeskus. Also present was a local Connecticut psychic, Barbara Dryden-Masse. After some preliminaries, Kuzmeskus informed the packed theatre that Houdini was, in fact, in attendance. Remarkably, Houdini’s memory and famed magical abilities have faded on the other side. According to a report in the Hartford Courant (“Houdini Eludes Psychic at Seance,” November 1, 1997), Houdini did not recognize the names of people important in his life as relayed to him through the medium and psychic, nor could he discern the contents of a sealed envelope supplied by Houdini historian Larry Weeks.
Houdini, however, was not silent. He did relay at least one message. Certainly, it is interesting to know what Houdini, dead now for seventy-one years, felt was most important to convey in this first “successful” contact from the other side. Did Houdini describe the afterlife, or did he share his experience of the mind of God? Well, actually, no. After all this time, Houdini’s message was a bit more pedestrian and practical; he thought the play was a bit overlong and needed a little punching up in the humor department (no, I am not making this up). If I were one of the producers, I would be more than a bit worried; after all, if a dead guy can figure out a play is in trouble, I can’t imagine what the New York critics will say about it.
Ken Feder is a CSICOP fellow and an anthropologist at Central Connecticut State University.
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