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LYING Cheating Bastard
By James Galea and Nicholas Hammond
Directed by Nicholas Hammond
Soft Tread Productions
Gardens Theatre
George Street
Brisbane

NOW here’s a show that is pure entertainment. It’s short – 85 minutes long – sharp, intelligent, funny and filled with baffling card tricks from Australia’s popular magician James Galea.
This is Galea’s debut as a straight actor and what an engaging and convincing character he has created. Jimmy “the cricket” Garcia is a card shark who has been sucked into the dark side of Sydney and uses his natural ability with playing cards to become king of the con men.
On stage Galea has terrific presence. He’s good-looking, confident and an absolute charmer with an engaging smile: The perfect con man in fact. And he plays his role with absolute sincerity. He is Jimmy the Cricket.
The play, written by Galea and director Nicholas Hammond, is part fiction and part autobiographical.
Galea as a young man learned a lesson about gambling very young at a fairground. He learned about “the mark”. The impression left by chalky fingers on a punter’s jacket that signified him as an easy mark.
As an 11-year-old he lost a lot of money trying to win prizes by knocking over three milk bottles. It was after studying the stall for a while that he discovered the secret: one bottle was weighted and could not be knocked over when placed on the bottom row. He knew how to win then, but the stallholder knew that he knew and told him, not politely, to go away.
Later he met up with an old con man who taught him magic tricks with cards and Galea discovered he had a natural talent for sleight of hand and went on to become a master magician. Only later did he realise that the tricks he learned had been used to cheat in high stakes card games.
So onto the fictional Garcia and his mentor Frankie
He learned how to be a poker player with his three basic rules: be in control, play the percentages, and never let anyone cut the deck - oh and to cheat perfectly. His conscience salver for his wicked ways is that he believes he is not to blame for other people’s greed.
He repeats the old adage: if it looks too good to be true, it usually is. But he also knows that there is a sucker born every minute
There are a lot of laughs in the show, but there are deeper moments too, darker moments when he cons a trusting friend because he had to come up with big bucks to keep the loan sharks away from his kneecaps.
He played the shell game, the three card trick and earned himself a lot of money and Frankie decided he was up to the big con – a card game with a million dollar stake and a foolproof plan to cheat his way to fortune.
It’s this game that leads to the suspenseful cliff-hanger of an ending to Act One.
But this is much more than a straight one-man play; it had all the elements of Galea’s talents. We saw some amazing card tricks and some tricky piano too.
He told us he was going to con us, that he was a liar and a cheat and that everything he said was intended to confuse his audience and to make us do what he wanted us to do. He was so clever at his job too.
We watched as a live camera focused on his mesmerising hands. He palmed cards that then disappeared; he changed the numbers in front of our eyes. He was bewildering in his speed and dexterity and yet he did all these tricks not as Galea the magician but as Jimmy the Cricket the character, the man who told us his life story. The tricks were his props to explain his life.
All this was played out against a brilliant set comprised of mirrors and neon lights. It was his home and looked like five-star accommodation. He is there because he never loses. He even brings the audience into play with a neat cards-sealed-in-an-envelope trick. He offers an audience member the chanced to win a thousand dollars against a dollar coin. He tells us straight not to trust him that every time he speaks he speaks to confuse, to direct thoughts into our heads, to pull the wool over our eyes
“There is a pack of cards in there all face down, except one,” he said. “My bet is that whoever guesses the number of that card will be right.”
He picks a member of the audience. “You pick someone at random,” he said. “That way the audience will know I haven’t chosen an accomplice.
The woman picks a man at random. He picks the ace of spades, which of course it is. The dollar goes into a brandy glass filled with other such coins.
Magic? Mind reading or more smoke and mirrors?
My guess was a double bluff, a double audience plant. But was it? He was clever enough to keep us all guessing. Then, just when we think he can do no more to entertain he leads us to the finale.
This, like all good gambling stories revolves around showdown between him and mentor Frankie. Jimmy wants out, Frankie wants him in, but then comes up with a deal: play poker with a million dollar pot. If Jimmy wins he takes the money; if Frankie wins Jimmy pays off the million by working it off.
It is a great finale played with the most amazing card trick you’ll ever see.
The rest of the national tour is:
July 23, 24 Casula Powerhouse; 27-31, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre; August 3-7, Wollongong - Illawarra Performing Arts; 10th – Dubbo; 12th - Orange Civic Theatre;
13-14 - Bathurst Memorial Entertainment ;18th - Coffs Harbour - The Jetty Memorial Theatre; 20th - Tamworth - The Capitol Theatre 24-28- Riverside Theatres
www.absolutetheatre.com.au

PHOTO: Don’t play poker with this man! James Galea as Jimmy “the cricket” Garcia