Stars of the AVT #20: Mark Mitton

This post is one of a series profiling the hundreds of performers I’ve presented through my American Vaudeville Theatre in celebration of its 15th anniversary. Don’t miss the American Vaudeville Theatre’s 15th Anniversary ExTRAVaganza in the New York International Fringe Festival this August!

Mark Mitton is that rare comedy-magician who is equally adept at comedy and magic, and superlative at both. His bland, goofy deadpan has been compared to Bob Newhart’s, yet his art is a little more unsettling. The more he tries to reassure you that what is about to happen will be okay and normal, the more you fear (in a good way, in the up-side of a roller coaster kind of way) that you are about to enter unfamiliar territory. One of my favorite gags of his is when he sneezes and vomits a deck of cards out of his mouth. I’m also fond of a sort of indescribable routine where he raps a sort of poem, all the while illustrating the key words with some kind of bizarre bamboo folding instrument from the Far East. He is especially adept at close magic, card tricks and party tricks of the “Let me borrow your watch” variety. He has literally performed all over the world and consulted on numerous Hollywood movies and Broadway shows. He is also, like many a magician, a scholar, not just of magic, but of math (he was an economics major) and the intricate workings of the brain (I’ve seen him moderate panels at New York’s Philoctetes Center).

I first met this remarkable performer in about 1995 at the Big Apple Circus, where we both worked at the time. He was one of the first people I booked for the American Vaudeville Theatre. He played our run at the Duplex in 1997, came back for a turn at Surf Reality in 2000, and performed for our revue at Theater for the New City in 2008.

To learn more about vaudeville past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.