Each of these dioramas will come into play as DelGaudio weaves simple but mesmerizing tales about a pivotal moment from his childhood, an encounter he had with a man in a bar, how our perceptions can be clouded depending on our frame of mind or even the time of day and how a seemingly innocuous object such as the aforementioned brick can take on great meaning in a certain context. The thirtysomething DelGaudio, who looks and sounds like the Most Average Man in the world and yet commands the stage with effortless ease, performs the work in a stark setting, on a stage containing two chairs and a table, with a ladder propped up against the back wall, which contains a half-dozen dioramas, including an automaton, a bottle of booze, a brass scale, the horizon at sundown, a brick penetrating a pane of glass and rows of mail compartment shelves containing dozens of letters. Throughout “In & of Itself,” DelGaudio breaks the fourth wall and not only addresses the audience as if they were sitting across from him in a diner but brings some individuals onstage and near the end walks among the audience, communicating with nearly every member of the crowd in a quiet, simple way that has the tear ducts working overtime. Literally dozens of performances are incorporated into the film, with good reason, e.g., at one point, DelGaudio singles out someone in the audience, tells that individual they’ll be leaving before the end of the performance, and invites them to take home a dictionary-thick book containing handwritten impressions of the show from previous audience members who were told they’d be going home before the end of the performance and writing their impressions of the show.
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That being said, it’s a tribute to the amazing and fantastically perplexing and singularly mind-blowing Hulu film “In & of Itself” that even though a few of the feats performed by magician/actor/storyteller/performance artist Derek DelGaudio in his one man-show could be explained away by the use of special effects (which DelGaudio does NOT employ, as far as we can tell), most of it just seems …ĭirected by Frank Oz of Muppets and voice-of-Yoda fame and with Stephen Colbert among its producers, “In & of Itself” is a “concert film” of DelGaudio’s one-man show at the Daryl Roth Theatre in Manhattan, which was produced by Neil Patrick Harris and ran from May 2016 until August 2018.