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Regional Reviews: St. Louis David Kwong: The Enigmatist Also see Richard's review of Promenade
On the simplest level, The Enigmatist is another cost-saving, pre-packaged show visiting the Rep as it goes around the nation. For decades, the most prestigious theater in town, the Rep is still digging itself out of a crushing debt left by the company's previous leadership and after more recent, politically motivated funding cuts in 2025. So, putting on a great little show like this almost seems like a magic act in itself by Artistic Director Kate Bergstrom and managing director Danny Williams. David Kwong's one-man dazzler is full of fast-paced spontaneity, with lots of audience participation. In that sense it resembles Mrs. Krishna's Party, a similarly lively and very intentionally engaging show that also toured through the Rep's Emerson Studio Theatre this past January. It looks like a great formula for success. And, hopefully, a relief from punishing financial burdens that had nothing to do with either Ms. Bergstrom or Mr. Williams. The Enigmatist premiered at the High Line Hotel in New York in 2019 before a full staging at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles in 2021. And this is its seventh stop on a tour that will shake your mental Etch-A-Sketch back to blankness, no matter how full of worried little doodles it might have been. Mr. Kwong, a New York Times crossword puzzle designer, races through a long list of lovely little posers–and more spectacularly, races through a swirl of big, seemingly impossible tricks that blow faster and faster through our minds, till they reach an F-5 level of intensity near the end. I can only hope we have people in government as smart as he is. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary. The background story borrows details from the life of George Fabyan (1867-1936), a wealthy eccentric with an estate in Geneva, Illinois. He loved cyphers and codes, and that same passion worked its way into the aid of his country during the Great War. There's also a charming love story woven through it all, even as Mr. Kwong's magic and sleight of hand builds to a frenzied pace in act two. Things seem perfectly normal at first. There's a card trick, a secret word, and a magic dollar bill. But then we get to the Periodic Table of Elements, where the enigmatist's mental agility really takes flight, like acrobatic teenagers dodging from ledge to ledge, though in this case it's purely a mental kind of parkour in all its glory. On some delirious level, it's pleasantly exhausting for the audience, though the conjurer shows no particular signs of strain. Finally, after a beat-the-clock game of Scrabble, there's an even greater matrix of the possible and impossible to reconcile, and to delight us. The audience helps out a bit, teaching Mr. Kwong about St. Louis-style pizza on opening night. But mostly we follow along in the breathless pursuit of a mathematically perfect wild goose. The second law of thermodynamics is regularly put to the test, as chaos flips back into order again and again before our very eyes. "There's no such thing as magic," he insists in the first ten minutes. Then again, the thunderous crack of reality fracturing inside your own head, over and over, will tell you otherwise. One of the evening's many volunteers from the audience surrenders a cell phone to the boyish wizard with jaw-dropping results. The pace becomes so brisk that there's not much time to question any of the illusions in act two. And the world around us, and our own thought formation, and "amodal completion" are all tested again and again, freeing us from the gloomy bonds of our own closely held assumptions. The evidence before us stacks up like a deck of cards, only to be riffled expertly into something completely unexpected, seconds or minutes or hours later–but just as true as anything that came before. And if that's not magic, I don't know what is. David Kwong: The Enigmatist, produced by Erica Fee & James Seabright, runs through April 5, 2026, at The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Loretto Hilton complex, Webster University, 130 Edgar Rd., St. Louis MO. For tickets and information, please visit www.repstl.org. Cast: Production Staff: |
