The Pop Wizard's debut in New York has been a success of unexpected dimensions even for him, for whom nothing ever seems impossible. The dream of opening on Broadway was the pinnacle of him, he has fought for it against the wind and the pandemic, and it has finally arrived. And how. He was convinced that initially it would be a dream in which he would lose a lot of money. And yet the success is being such that he will probably leave town, he admits, with benefits. After the teleportation stunt he did for NBC's Today Show the next day, his was, he says, the best-selling Broadway production. But not only that, after his electrifying debut on Sunday with a standing audience at the Ethel Barrymore Theater on Broadway, a few meters from Times Square, now the big theater companies in the city are fighting for his show. So he has not been able to rest and this Monday morning he has been listening to proposals, although for now he will not sign anything.
They directly offer him that the show should not end this Sunday the 27th, that it continue, that it have a season, but Antonio Díaz, El Mago Pop, Badia del Vallès, 1986, confesses to the Spanish press that now he wants to rest and take a vacation in El Masnou, be with your loved ones, eat rice and slow down to decide well. “Everyone came to see us at the premiere, the most important groups. We would not have imagined this welcome, now all the meetings are urgent, everything is for today. We'll listen, I have to stop or I'll hurt myself, I'm very tired, I want a two-week vacation, I haven't had one for two years. Gain strength for the challenge of coming back and trying to do it very well ”, he confesses.
And he points out that for him it is not negotiable not to do the season that he has planned from October at his Barcelona theater, the Victòria. “They don't want us to leave, but for me Barcelona is immovable, this Christmas I want to spend it there, I have lost my father, I want to be with my mother. And for the Victòria theater it is also important ”, he remarks very confidently. For now, the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, will come to his show at the end of the week, in October he will return to the city of skyscrapers to collect the Hola award for outstanding Latino artist of the year, already held by Antonio Banderas or Andy García, and has scheduled interventions in major American television programs. And they already stop him on the New York avenues to ask for photos after the success of his appearance on the Today Show. An overwhelming success that he carries calmly, although in the long round of applause on Sunday his emotion was palpable and tears appeared.
A success that, he admits, may make him rethink his American plans. He bought a huge theater in Branson, Missouri, something like the Las Vegas of American family entertainment with 14 million visitors a year. Nearly three thousand locations where he will start the season in May. But then he did not imagine, he admits, what would happen on Broadway. “I thought that here it would be the tail of a lion, but tail, tail, I did not imagine the debut like that. You can change the plans a bit. I had a long-term plan, now let's see how we do it. I don't want to rush it, ”she says.
And it is that the success of Sunday was overwhelming. The actor Christian Slater when leaving says that he found the show "amazing", "exciting", "great", "he is a mysterious man". An official at the Shubert Organization, which owns the Ethel Barrymore Theater and 16 others on Broadway, the largest group in the American theater mecca, says seeing Antonio Díaz's illusions, from card games to amazing teleportations, has been “incredible ”, “dazzling”, “fantastic”, after applauding excitedly standing up. And he points out that "it is not the type of shows we are used to having and it is clear that it can attract another public to our theaters, we hope it will return soon".
El Mago Pop explains that "after the show, the person in charge of Shubert told me not to listen to the criticism, because the public rules here, and they have left exultant". But even so, the critics have been unanimous in the unquestionable quality of his magic. I am a control freak. He knew that the critic from The New York Times was coming and where he was sitting, he saw him, he believed that he makes a face that he is not liking him. And today you see the criticism and it is overwhelming, ”he smiles. "An ordinary man with a magical touch", is the title of the review, which emphasizes that it is his tricks with cards and balls that are the most amazing. "Who needs a helicopter when you can do magic like that?" concludes the review in the great New York newspaper, referring to the previous appearance of this device on the scene.
“Today about fifty reviews have come out and they are all very positive. I did not expect. I thought they would be more forceful negatively, I am aware that things need to be improved in the show, that I myself want to change", he confesses, and says about the only notable criticism received in any medium, which says that the magic is impeccable but there is too much self-importance when counting his own trajectory between number and number. "I agree," he says shamelessly, "but it was difficult to come here from so far, you have to explain yourself before you start, I don't like self-promotion but sometimes it's necessary, it's a marketing strategy that we've had to do, although for me with that the show is worse”, he says, and hopes that it is only necessary for this once.
Díaz, whose idols are Houdini and David Copperfield, continues to dream. The new dream is that “El Mago Pop would be the most important magic brand in the US, make history and settle in Barcelona for the last years of my career to help make it one of the great avenues recognized worldwide in the arts. scenic, it can be, it has all the ingredients and an incredible city”. For now, he has decisions ahead of him, until today he has produced himself and now investors are knocking on the door to give the show even more size and face the enormous economic risks that doing a season on Broadway means. “We have come this far alone and I doubt. A long season alone on Broadway makes you dizzy, but if you can, deciding makes me very happy”, concludes the Catalan magician.
