Shin Lim Limitless

Shin Lim is a 32-year-old Canadian-American magician. At age 24, he won the prestigious Fédération Internationale des Sociétés Magiques award for close-up card magic. He’s also the only contestant ever to win the “America’s Got Talent” competition twice, the first for Season 13 and the second for AGT’s first “The Champions” tournament, beating out 50 winners and notable acts from a number of previous seasons.

So we’re not exaggerating when we say that Shin Lim might be the best card magician of all time. His show at the Mirage demonstrates his skills so well that you can hardly believe that what you’re seeing isn’t actual magic.

But it’s not just Lim’s show. He shares the stage with a Scottish magician-comic, Colin Cloud, a fast-talking young Scot with a lilting brogue. He opens the show and immediately launches into his interactive shtick. His first trick with audience members’ cell phones alerts you to the fact that Cloud might be to mentalism what Lim is to sleight of hand.

When Lim does his first card trick, you know what the “AGT” hullaballoo was all about. He rips a card in two and puts it back together, right before your lyin’ eyes.

Three big screens broadcast Lim’s handiwork, a giant one toward the back of the stage and two smaller ones, though plenty big, on either side. We were sitting four rows up from the stage in the far-right corner, directly under the screen, and we watched in awe as Lim’s delicate fingers manipulated the playing cards, making them appear and disappear as if he had his own personal vacuum cleaner into oblivion.

Early in the show, Lim provides some backstory; he trained to be a concert pianist until he was diagnosed with a bad case of carpal tunnel at age 20, then determined to pursue his magic career. He plays “Fur Elise” on an onstage grand piano for a bit. He talks very little, allowing the magic and the ever-dramatic soundtrack to speak for themselves. The backs of cards change suits. A joker turns into a $100 bill. He turns all the cards in a deck into a single card of an audience-member’s choice, then thousands of that card drop from the ceiling. Smoking cards emerge from his mouth. Cards magically change places in a plastic bag. And those are just the ordinary tricks!

Meanwhile, Colin Cloud is reading people’s minds, complete with props: a word guessing game from a book about Sherlock Holmes, his idol; the celebrity-photo installment (Elvis, of course); an elaborate act with four audience members and a receipt; random numbers that when turned upside down spell out—well, we don’t want to spoil it. The combination of the two performers keeps the show lively and provides some welcome variety.

For these performances, you do want to sit close to the stage; the seats toward the back of the 1,100-seat Mirage Theater will present a challenge, even with the big screens. But the prices of tickets are certainly reasonable; for our seats in the far corner, we paid $52.29, plus a $12.82 service fee and $9.95 for order processing, a total of $81.06. Get as close to the screens as you can.

Considering the excellence and differences of the performances, the soaring production values, and this day and age of through-the-roof ticket prices, Shin Lim’s Limitless can, in our opinion, be considered a bargain.