Flipping matching card pair after matching card pair onto the floor from a brand-new deck shuffled by a volunteer, Maxwell Fink spits, “You can’t win if you play with me.” Why? Because he’s not just a magician, he may be the devil. Lights dim to the candy pop song ‘Sh-Boom (Life Could Be a Dream).’

“Hoax,” the latest play within a magic show by Baltimore-based playwright Annelise Montone and magician Brian M. Kehoe, livens up familiar card tricks and séance gimmicks with audience participation and an occult-inspired narrative. Kehoe and Montone, who perform together as “The Encounter,” introduced the characters of Maxwell Fink and Sarah Swanson last summer in Victorian-era séance piece “Planchette,” and are planning to debut a new show featuring their characters called “Awake at Midnight” in 2017.

Kehoe is Fink, a recently reformed con man who’s on a mission to dispel common hoaxes with the help of his assistant, Sarah Swanson, played by Montone, who also wrote the show’s dialogue. The performance consists of a series of stories about con artists like “Soapy Smith,” a money-wrapped soap scammer, paired with related magic tricks requiring audience participation. The narrative helps remove “Hoax” from any comparison to shows starring a goateed guy flinging glitter at you while pulling a dove from his dragon-printed silk shirt..  Read more…  (Photo: Annelise Montone and Brian M. Kehoe of Hoax.. Courtesy/Rob Vary)

http://www.citypaper.com/arts/stage/bcp-081716-stage-hoax-20160816-story.html