The main axis of Mateusz Pakuła's chamber play is the meeting of two extraordinary figures of the 20th century: Harry Houdini (illusionist, escape specialist, debunker of spiritualist mediums) and Arthur Conan Doyle (writer, spiritualist, creator of the character Sherlock Holmes). The men meet in New York in 1922. They are accompanied by their wives: Bess Houdini (professionally also Harry's stage assistant) and Jean Conan Doyle (considered a spiritualist medium by Arthur). Their meeting is marked with an unspoken tension at the beginning, and over time by an increasingly open conflict between the rational and the irrational. At first, however, it might seem that it is the creator of the Sherlock Holmes novels who should be the proponent of what can be grasped and proven by human reason. The paradox of both this meeting and Matthew Pakula's play is that it is Harry Houdini, magician and illusionist, chasing away clouds and "disappearing" elephants on request, who is a believer in all things rational.
As the plot develops, the atmosphere between the couples grows thicker and thicker. A kind of climax of the play becomes the moment when Harry Houdini's mother supposedly begins to speak through Jean Conan Doyle... The magician and illusionist, however, is not fooled and cannot understand how educated people can allow themselves to be drawn into such "whirlwinds of nonsense", and his wife Bess ridicules the spiritualist séance with the statement: "I think the culprit is probably Plato, our reality is just a shadow of the true reality of blah blah blah."
Houdini vs Conan Doyle by Mateusz Pakuła is a brilliantly constructed, realistic and wildly comic play for two actors and two actresses. Both the following scenes of the piece and the distinctive characters are built in such a way that the play draws you into its content and does not allow you to tear yourself away for a moment. Here the author poses a question about the function of the irrational in our lives and forces us to reflect on faith in everything that cannot be explained by reason. What human needs, longings and fears does this faith respond to? And is it really worth tracking down and deconstructing all incomprehensible and inexplicable mysteries? What, in fact, is the difference between a predilection for illusionist tricks and belief in spiritualistic séances, and, following this line of thought - belief in God?
It's hard not to get the impression that this reflection in some way also applies to the medium of theater itself and the "illusionary magic" it produces, and thus also to theatrical tools. So the question remains as to what we choose to see. Arthur Conan Doyle's spiritualistic séance or Harry Houdini's "disappearance" of an elephant?