From Wayne Kawamoto,
Your Guide to Magic & Illusion.
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L&L has combined bill in lemon routines from the DVDs and videos of several artists that include: Bill Malone, Doc Eason Fielding West, J. J. Sanvert and Ted Lesley. It’s fascinating to watch the different technical approaches to the effect as well as the presentations. If you want to perform a bill in lemon routine, you will find this DVD worthwhile.

Raising the Lemon Bar

Classic "bill in lemon" is a particularly potent version of the "borrowed object to impossible location" magic plot. Here, a borrowed and marked card or bill - the object is either signed or a corner is torn off and acts as a receipt - ends up inside of a lemon or orange. The fruit has to be cut open to reveal the borrowed object inside.

With their bar backgrounds, Bill Malone and Doc Eason offer similar methods. Eason's approach is based on Steven Spill's "Bill in the Lemon," which presents the lemon before the bill is vanished. In these routines, the borrowed bill is signed and then vanished, and the bill that appears in the lemon at the end is the actual bill. One can learn a lot from both Malone and Eason.

No Lemons Here

Fielding West offers a hilarious stage version where the signed bill is revealed inside of an orange that the spectator has chosen. J. J. Sanvert offers an offbeat presentation that presents the "creation of life" and causes a chosen playing card to shrink into a miniature card and then turn into a seed, which "grows" into the lemon.

Ted Lesley performs and demonstrates a version that relies on an envelope that he teaches how to make and use. Unfortunately, Lesley's "bill in lemon" routine is a subset of a larger routine so the explanation is rather confusing. Still, Lesley's method offers yet another means to vanish the bill and cause it to later appear in the lemon.

In both Sanvert's and Lesley's version, the convincer is a corner that's torn from the card or bill and is shown to later fit on the object that's retrieved from the lemon.

Making Lemonade

If you've been wanting to put "Bill in Lemon" into your act, this DVD is provides lots of methods and approaches that will help you develop your routine.

-Wayne N. Kawamoto

MSRP: (US) $19.95

Dealers can purchase from Murphy's Magic Supplies, Inc.