An upside-down man, chained, lowered into a water tank — the most famous stunt in magic history played out again in Budapest on Friday, as the Budapest Circus premiered a new production honouring Harry Houdini a century after his death on Halloween 1926.
The show doesn't follow a cradle-to-grave biopic formula. Instead, it frames Houdini as a figure suspended between life and death, with his wife pleading with Persephone, queen of the Greek underworld, for his return. Director Laszlo Magacs told Reuters that escape acts are inherently about flirting with mortality — "he's always going to the other side." The production mixes theatre, dance and acrobatics, and includes a recreation of the legendary 1912 water escape, in which Houdini was plunged upside down into a tank with his feet locked in stocks. Magacs calls Houdini "the first influencer in the world" — a master of self-promotion as much as escapology.
Budapest is the natural stage for it. Houdini was born Erik Weisz there in 1874, son of a rabbi, before his family emigrated to the United States to escape antisemitism in Austria-Hungary. By 30 he was a global celebrity, famous for slipping out of handcuffs, shackles and traps — and he also wrote books, acted in films and recorded spoken word.
The circus premiere is part of a wider centennial wave. A rare Houdini essay about early American magicians, "An Interesting Scrapbook," has just been published for the first time in The Strand Magazine. A new book, Larrian Gillespie's "Houdini: The Man Who Died Twice," argues — controversially — that Houdini actually died on October 30, not Halloween, and questions the official diagnosis of appendicitis-related peritonitis. Houdini scholars are sceptical, but the debate only adds to the mystique around a man whose grave at Machpelah Cemetery in New York has long drawn Halloween visitors. Other centennial events include a "Grand Houdini Centenarium" in Budapest, a memorabilia auction in Hollywood, and seances in cities like Chicago and Frederick, Maryland.
For travellers, this makes Budapest an unusually good call right now. The city that raised Houdini is staging a fresh circus-theatre production built around one of his most iconic stunts — a genuinely different evening out, especially around Halloween. Pair it with the usual Budapest draw cards: thermal baths, the Danube-side parliament building, and the old Jewish Quarter where his family's story began.
