“WHAT is reality? Reality is whatever you make of it,” muses the magician from Sea Point who made the Voortrekker Monument disappear last year.

“The truth is whatever you believe it to be – and I believe anything is possible.”
Larry Soffer (28) rolls up his sleeves, opens a black carry bag and presents an ordinary fork.
“We should be more like children. As a kid, you don’t see the world through blurred vision. You see beautiful colours. Things look bright. You enjoy life and see it as a game. You don’t take things so seriously,” he says while placing the silver object on the glass table.
“When things become serious, they become solid and more difficult to deal with.”

He moves his hands over the fork in a clockwise direction, moments before it starts to quiver disconcertingly.
Common sense and logic momentarily hide as the ordinary becomes extraordinary.
Soffer granted People’s Post an hour of his time to speak about a magical world suspended beyond disbelief, but he managed to warp more than just this reporter’s reality.

Table Bay Hotel waiters and waitresses hovered around the table in fascination as the demonstration continued.
Soffer asks one of the waitresses to hold on to the fork tightly. A few moments later, when she opens her hand, the fork is completely twisted around its own axis.
Jaws drop.

“You’ve seen it warp over; now watch this…”
He shakes the fork ever so slightly and – right in front of several sets of stunned eyes – one of the four tines bends at a 90-degree angle.
“What the hell?” asks one astonished onlooker while testing the strength of the bent object.
Soffer persists, “Now I’m going to make it a little more spectacular for you guys, a little bit more beautiful…”
He shakes the fork again and – lo and behold – the other three tines each bend at varying angles.
Soffer’s no stranger to entranced gasps of “No!” and “How?”

“I still get pleasure from what I do, because every night I get to go back home with a different girl,” he says with tongue firmly in the cheek.
“No, seriously, every now and again someone changes their life when they see what I do. Some will go, ‘Oh, it’s just a trick,’ which is fine as long as they were entertained, but if they believe it’s real, then they can create real magic in their own lives. Anything is possible!”

The fifth level magician has come a long way since he first became engrossed in magic at the age of five. He has performed all over the world in front of many celebrities and notables, such as prince Harry, Michael Jordan, Andy Macdowell, Trevor Manuel and the prince of Arabia.

“I turned a R100 bill into a piece of paper while Trevor Manuel was holding it. He dropped it immediately in disbelief,” laughs Soffer, before adding that the prince of Arabia got pretty upset with his own bodyguards when the royal watch mysteriously appeared on the wrist of Soffer’s business partner, Gabriela Wiener.

This mind-reading, levitating metal bender won most of his course competitions at the College of Magic in Cape Town and has, since then, been getting rave reviews from veteran magicians the world over.
One of the world’s top performers, Stan Gerson, once paid him the ultimate compliment when he said, “There is no doubt in my mind that Larry Soffer will go down as one of the finest magicians of the 21st century. As a professional magician for 35 years, I find it an honour to be in his company.”

Soffer has appeared on numerous television shows and radio stations over the years, and he made many scratch their heads when the Voortrekker Monument disappeared on April Fool’s Day last year.
But, as the saying goes, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”
As part of Cape Town’s bid to become one of the best cities in the world, Soffer is planning “something massive” for the end of this year.

People’s Post ventures that he’s going to make Table Mountain disappear, but Wiener shakes her head and says cryptically, “Think again! What is a hotspot for tourists right now?”
Her denial speaks volumes: a prominent place will indeed disappear! Soffer performs one final feat during the interview when he takes someone’s sunglasses and places them on the carpet.

Now, you’re looking for the secret, but of course, you’re not really looking… You don’t really want to know… You want to be fooled…

He jerks his hands back and the sunglasses flip over on their side.
For the briefest of moments the harsh sunlight reflects off a thin strand hanging from his finger.

For more information go to http://www.larrysoffer.com.

***DISCLAIMER: THIS ARTICLE AND PHOTO WERE PUBLISHED IN PEOPLE’S POST, A CAPE TOWN BASED MEDIA24 COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER. NEITHER MAY BE DUPLICATED WITHOUT ACCREDITING THE SOURCE – PEOPLE’S POST, MEDIA24.***