Penn & Teller: The Bad Boys of Magic

Photograph by Robert John Kley

The show must go on. And for magicians Penn & Teller, it’s been moving along for 20 years in Las Vegas. But the age-old adage recently
took on its true meaning when a lightning storm temporarily threw the Penn & Teller Theater into total darkness. Unfazed, Penn Jillette—the larger, louder half of the dynamic duo—took over. “We lit some candles, I beefed up my voice, and we did material in the dark,” Penn explains.

Consummate professionals, Penn & Teller have been performing together since the late 1970s. They played their first Vegas show at Bally’s on January 14, 1993, and have been a resident act here since, spending the last 12 years at Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino. “The joke’s always been you go to Vegas to die,” Penn says. “Hopefully, we’ll die in the office here, not soon though. But when it’s all over, I want to die at the Rio.”