MAGIC FINGERS

If there's someone you'd like to see disappear, at least for awhile, famed illusionist David Copperfield may have a trick you'll really like.

In his new show "U!," Copperfield summons 13 people out of the audience and on stage only to make them disappear.

"U!" will be presented at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Wednesday at the Show Me Center.

Copperfield has made quite a few people and objects seem to disappear in his years as the world's most well-known illusionist, including the Statue of Liberty, an airplane and an Orient Express train car. If you believe your eyes, he also has walked through The Great Wall of China, levitated over the Grand Canyon and escaped from Alcatraz.

Copperfield also will seem to walk through the blades of a giant industrial fan and to fly.

While known for the grand illusion, Copperfield does not neglect the close-up interactive illusions that also have the power to astound.

He also is the owner of the International Museum and Library of the Conjuring Arts, the foremost repository of historical documentation and artifacts on magic, illusion and the allied arts.

Among the artifacts are Houdini's Metamorphosis Trunk, the ancestor of one of the most popular contemporary illusions, Okito's Floating Ball, an illusion that even fooled magicians at the time, and the turban owned by Alexander, "The Man Who Knows." The turban reveals exactly how Alexander knew.