Penn & Teller at the London Palladium is a magic comedy show, starring Penn Jillette as the talker and Teller as the near silent foil. It marks their first West End residency as part of their 50th anniversary tour.
The show unfolds in two acts, each built around a handful of major set piece tricks framed by Penn’s commentary and crowd work. Early on, the audience is asked to estimate the number of jelly beans in a jar, a classic gambit. Later Teller executes a silent card routine through glass while Penn accompanies on double bass when the pianist steps aside. In between are smaller routines: one involving a long polyester sheet being cut and then reassembled, another about entropy split across both halves, where objects are destroyed and then strangely restored. The finale reframes an earlier trick so that its true cleverness only becomes evident in hindsight. These sequences are paced with dance like interludes of lighting shifts, theatrical delays, and Penn’s asides to the audience.
Penn Jillette plays his role exactly as you would expect after half a century’s experience. He is loud, confident, feral in his asides. In one middle trick, as he goads a volunteer, he slips in a sarcastic “Now you can die” line when the guest says the trick was on their bucket list. It lands, partly because his timing is surgical. Teller, meanwhile, chooses silence almost always but opts for maximum expressiveness through gesture and pause. In the weak spot before the entropy sequence, he hesitates, reaches out, then withdraws. That hesitation keeps you suspended long enough to believe something might go wrong. His brief speaking line in the finale catches you off guard because it breaks his rule and signals that the illusion’s logic has shifted.
The show tilts unevenly. The first half drags with more patter than punch and more explanation than spectacle. The second act feels a bit stronger, but not magic. Apart from the finale, which is fun but not jaw-dropping in the way that a Derren Brown finale invariably is, there is nothing here you won’t have seen at other magic shows. There are moments where Penn over explains or stalls. His digressions about fooling the audience sometimes stop short of insight and feel like safety rails.
The staging is quietly excellent. LED screens in the wings deliver close ups so that small sleights register for everyone. When Teller’s glass trick plays out, spotlights cut sharply and the glass edge is backlit so you see its outline shimmer. Costumes stay neutral, dark jackets and simple attire, so that props and bodies remain central. Sound design is minimal but precise. The double bass, the piano, the quiet click of mechanisms, all are balanced so that silence itself carries tension.
You will get your money’s worth if you’re in one of the cheaper seats. At over £100 in the centre stalls (where this reviewer sat), it felt not quite good enough. Penn & Teller at the Palladium is not a greatest hits magic show. Nor is it that great. It’s just about good enough.