Verso NYC Reviews and Tickets

"The fun here is in searching for potential telltale clues and fake-outs as he casually ambles his way from sleight-of-hand flimflam to pseudo-telepathic reads...It’s harder to fill a whole evening when you’re alone onstage, and while it sports some impressive feats, the new show, directed by Rodrigo Santos, feels padded...It’s easy to share his excitement. Not just because the tricks are impressive, but because their buildups are so protracted that the payoff comes as a relief."
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"Verging on two hours long, including an intermission, it includes what seems like a lot of padding, at a cost to its sense of enchantment...Routines that would be very impressive at a table in a nightclub are less of a wow in a 200-seat theater...Many of the bits are familiar...Although 'Verso' is performed and designed with skill, it evokes more admiration than excitement. Guimarães is great with his fingers, but there aren’t enough new tricks up his sleeve."
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"It almost feels like a seminar on the psychology of the swindle...In a craft as reliant on the suspension of disbelief as magic, it's a ballsy choice to ask viewers to sharpen their BS-detectors, but that's exactly what Guimarães does consistently through this thought-provoking show. Luckily for him, he's an incredibly gifted parlor magician...With 'Verso,' Guimarães has created a magic show for our paranoid age...He tells us to trust no one, not even him."
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"The trick here is that Guimarães never seems completely confident that what he's doing is going to work, and when he seems to have been foiled a couple of times, his imperfection adds to the illusion that everything else is real. At two hours, the show does lose steam now and then, especially when Guimarães philosophizes about different realms of reality and what is and isn't possible, but 'Verso' is an engaging charmer providing good clean family fun."
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"While performing his feats, Guimarães displays a sly confidence that borders on cockiness, but because he does enough to earn it (how did he get the name of a completely random country on the back of that card?!?), he's nonetheless engaging onstage. During the in-between scenes, when he attempts to contextualize his magic, a lot of that rough-edged likability evaporates and he becomes more mechanical...It's just short of the sparkle that separates the very good from the great."
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"Perhaps he could warm up his presentation style. He can come off a little 'Corporate Motivational Speaker' in his delivery of well-practiced anecdotes. When he’s directly interacting with the audience, however, he is generous and friendly...Add Guimarães’s pure technical skill and easy rapport with volunteers to a well-polished, balanced routine of 'mentalist'-type predictions and lie-detector tricks...and 'Verso' is an evening you’ll remember for a very long time."
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"His philosophical patter is smart enough to intrigue those who ‘get it’ while peppered with colloquialisms to draw in others whose only desire is to be tricked...Two thirds of the somewhat padded evening (buildups are prolonged, some deceptions feel redundant) is occupied with card tricks...Long cons are well utilized with set-ups early on and revelations much later...The evening, if a bit long, is enjoyable; well performed and well directed."
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"You will be stunned, no doubt about it. But there isn’t much to this show beyond being fooled. There is barely a touch of atmosphere, hardly any romance or wonderment. For conjuring to be its most effective it should have a sense of poetry, a raison d’etre...Magic fans should definitely check out this talented performer; he didn’t win that trophy for nothing. But the show’s concept, script and staging do nothing to elevate Guimarães’ performance above that of an evening of bafflement."
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