Le Grand David

What it is

Le Grand David was the stage name of David Bull and, by extension, the magic revue he starred in at Beverly, Massachusetts. Its full billing, Le Grand David and His Spectacular Magic Company, covered two shows: one at the Cabot Street Cinema Theatre and, from 1985, a second at the nearby Larcom Theatre. Both wove conjuring together with music, comedy and dance, and were staged for family audiences. The run lasted from February 1977 until spring 2012, and Guinness World Records credited the company with the longest unbroken stage magic run anywhere. Its scale was unusual for a suburban troupe: more than a thousand costumes, 45 painted backdrops and a repertory of about a hundred classic illusions, mounted in two restored playhouses.

Where it comes from

The show grew from work Pelaez began in the early 1970s, when he started assembling a troupe and brought it to Beverly. In 1976 the Cabot, an ageing cinema then showing films on their final runs at token prices, came on the market. A firm, White Horse Productions, was set up to purchase and refurbish it, with Pelaez at the head of the project, helped by friends in business and the arts. Space upstairs became workshops, and over six months carpenters, painters and seamstresses built the props and scenery for a stage untouched for half a century. The premiere followed just after the 1976 holidays, on a snowy Sunday, February 20, 1977, before a full and appreciative house.

Tools and materials

The company made much of its stock in house during the 1976 restoration: costumes from its own sewing rooms, scenery and backdrops from its painters, apparatus from its carpenters. The two productions between them used more than 1,000 costumes and 45 backdrops. After a new wing opened beside the Larcom in 1995, three galleries put the troupe's apparatus and poster art on display, next to a library, rehearsal rooms, a guest suite and a caretaker's flat, so the buildings doubled as an archive of the show.

What it is for

The shows were offered as family entertainment, and their run kept two historic buildings in use. Restoring the playhouses was part of the point: the Cabot carried on as a cinema under its new name, while the Larcom received an overhaul of the entire building before the second production opened there in October 1985. Visitors framed the work the same way. The Theatre Historical Society of America brought its 2006 Conclave to see the two theatres and gave Marco a form of tribute it had never bestowed before, citing his part in creating theatre history.

Who does it

Marco the Magi was the stage identity of Cesareo Pelaez, who lived from October 16, 1932 to March 24, 2012. He held the credits for producing, directing, design and choreography on both productions and appeared as a star in each. A biography, Wonderful Surprises by Avrom Surath, issued in 2007 and updated in March 2012, records his boyhood in Cuba and his earlier work with the psychologist Abraham Maslow. Le Grand David himself, David Bull, joined as an apprentice in the early 1970s, a generation his junior. The cast numbered several dozen performers.

Peoples and places

Beverly, Massachusetts, stayed the company's home throughout, and its first audiences were local: a Sunday matinée, then an added evening show as demand grew, drew spectators from in and around Boston and notice from regional media. The story went international about three years in, carried by TIME and Smithsonian magazines and an enthusiastic magic press. The company played the White House in Washington, D.C., seven times, and magic magazines put it on their covers more than 40 times. In 2006 the Theatre Historical Society of America brought its annual Conclave to town to tour both theatres.

When it is done

Performances settled into a Sunday rhythm at the Cabot, a single matinée at first and a second evening show added by the summer of 1977, with occasional Thursday dates once the Larcom production began. Early demand ran so high that one summer bill, advertised as The Whirlwind of Enchantment, played eighteen times in a fortnight. The premiere had been set just after the 1976 holiday season. The company marked its 35th anniversary on February 20, 2012, weeks before Pelaez's death.

How scholars and sceptics see it

The judgments on record come from historians and collectors within the magic world. Stuart Cramer, writing in MAGICOL, the journal of the Magic Collectors' Association, in 1993, called David Bull an exceptionally accomplished magician and showman and rated his Zombie above the work of the celebrated conjurer Neil Foster. Robert Lund, who established the American Museum of Magic at Marshall, Michigan, and died in 1995, judged it the finest magic show then running and held that no American conjurers had a better claim to be called 'America's national magic company'. The British historian and collector Dr. Edwin Dawes named the troupe 'magicdom's most incredible venture'.

Compare and confuse

TIME's reviewer placed the production in the lineage of vaudeville at its most lavish, and wrote that it looked as richly mounted as a Broadway musical despite its suburban setting. In reference lists the company sits beside institutions such as the American Museum of Magic and the Houdini Museum rather than beside individual performers.

Today

In spring 2012 the company disclosed that both shows would close. The Cabot Street Cinema Theatre went back to films only, and the two theatres with their adjoining spaces were offered for private functions. Pelaez died on March 24, 2012. On February 23, 2014, Kaminski Auctioneers sold more than 200 lots of the company's props, artwork, bronzes and memorabilia.

Questions people ask about Le Grand David

Good reading and sources

• Le Grand David on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data