By Robert Israel

Because this “play” relies on audience participation, Vinny DePonto selects inevitably befuddled men and women from the audience on which to demonstrate his mental prowess.

Mindplay, by Vinny DePonto and Josh Koenigsberg. Directed by Andrew Neisler. Produced by Eva Price. Presented by the Huntington Theatre Company, Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont St., Boston, MA, through December 1.

A scene from Mindplay. Photo: Chris Ruggiero

The woman seated near me during a matinee performance of Mindplay let loose loud cackles whenever the mood struck her, and the mood struck her early and often. Once again, as with the anemic production, Nassim, I will need to refer to this production as a “play” in quotes because what we get with Mindplay is a 85-minute sideshow, not a dramatic presentation. But that’s exactly what the woman seated near me came to see.

Except that Mindplay is only occasionally humorous. This is a magic show, an appellation that DePonto uses himself to describe his work, harkening back to his roots as a boy magician growing up amidst an adoring family in Dobbs Ferry, NY. Only he’d prefer that the “play” be seen as a work of “mentalism,” or “mind reader.” He explains his reasoning in this way: “To be honest, it provokes more thought than just a magician…people often think of rabbit-out-of-a-hat kid’s magician…I like to think a mentalist is a type of performer that uses tools like theater, magic and psychology, to create an experience that centers around the power of one’s thoughts.”

We do get examples of “mentalism” but I won’t cite them here to avoid raising even the slightest hint of a spoiler alert. Suffice it to say, DePonto is a talented mentalist and, at one or two points in the production, I thought I might learn a trick or two about how to tap into ancient memories tucked away in the dark recesses of my mind. DePonto, a slender bewhiskered gentleman fast on his feet, projects an amiable demeanor; he has studied all these tricks of the trade, going back centuries and, most recently, makes an admiring nod to the late Solomon Shereshevsky, who, he tells us, had an amazing ability to use his mind to communicate nuances in multiple languages, music, colors, and more – which he had no foreknowledge of.

But back to the woman seated in my aisle at the Calderwood. Because this “play” relies on audience participation, DePonto selects inevitably befuddled men and women from the audience on which to demonstrate his mental prowess. It’s impressive. And the enjoyment the woman seated near me elicited was genuine — it is entertaining. I’d venture to say she got her money’s worth.

A scene from Mindplay. Photo: Chris Ruggiero

I’d rather have seen DePonto assert more of a balance in the show. Namely, provide more instruction about how we all can use our memories to claw back images from our pasts, and, in the Shereskevsky vein, to probe areas of consciousness we never suspected we had. But DePonto has to walk the (carny?) tightrope here. He has to be charming, enticing, and, like the vaudevillian magician of his long ago youth, he has to regularly perform tricks for our amusement.

There was a time, back in nineteenth century Boston, when the Gayety Theatre — located in what used to be known as the Combat Zone — served up a colorful cast of characters, most of them tawdry damsels populating a razzle-dazzle revue for the masses. DePonto would probably have loved to have been a young performer back then, winking at the girls and, indeed, pulling rabbits out of an assortment of top hats.

Flash forward to now: we get this sideshow with its gewgaws and colorful lights and its fishbowl of audience responses to “What’s on your mind?” It is led by an agile performer who tries to educate us about the nooks and crannies of the mind, but ends up giving us what we crave — a version of the sweet confection served in free ice cream cups distributed in the lobby at the end of the show

Robert Israel, an Arts Fuse contributor since 2013, can be reached at risrael_97@yahoo.com.