Such skills are delightfully on display in their new production, “Penn & Teller on Broadway,” elegantly directed by John Rando. They also graciously give credit to all the backstage people who are involved in the technical aspects of the show, as well as to excellent pianist Mike Jones, who at the upright adds musical flair, including before the actual show begins. Penn & Teller make a big point of involving the audience. As people enter the theater they are invited to come on stage and examine a special box as well as sign their names to a poster.

In choosing members of the audience to participate in the magic—and there is a lot of that—they don’t always choose so-called beautiful people. Appealing youngsters or an attractive woman, sure, but they also may just as likely invite a man or woman who is overweight. In one trick, humorously making a visibly phony elephant disappear, Penn asks a whole entourage of folk to come on stage to watch.

About that elephant. It is hilarious to see what is supposed to pass for an elephant looking like a doctored up cow. But there is still a how-did-they-do that wonder in watching the thing vanish.

At the start of the show, Penn—he’s the one who does all of the rapid-fire talking, while Teller looks mischievously angelical—does something counter to the usual announcement. He asks everyone to turn on their cellphones and call one another, the start of a bit in which he gets a wife to phone her husband, which we all hear.

Penn also mocks the idea of psychics, yet he does a trick that involves passing out joke books to volunteers, choosing two individuals, asking them to select a joke, and then presto, indentifying the jokes they have chosen. Neat. Penn assures the audience that there are no planted shills as he says are in some magic shows because he doesn’t want to spend money hiring them.

Teller, for all of his Harpo-like silence, contributes masterfully to the program, including apparently swallowing of needles galore, and then pulling them out of his mouth in a long strung thread. In one gambit called “He’s a Little Teapot,” Teller appears to pour water from his hands, first the right, then the left. He also charmingly cooperates with Penn on an egg trick and other "magic."

There is the customary pulling of a rabbit out of a top hat, fire-eating and the traditional sawing of a woman in half. The woman in question is attractive, statuesque Georgie Bernasek, who climbs into a long coffin-like box. There is no ordinary saw, but a giant saw wheel used for the slicing. What makes the reprise of this staple freshly and ghoulishly amusing is the mass of supposed blood splattering all over.

One part of the act audience members might recall next time they fly, is the use on stage of the type metal screener one has to pass through these days. It turns out to be a ploy for selling a souvenir in the lobby.