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“Do you believe in magic in a young girl’s heart?” is the opening line of a song from 1965 by The Lovin’ Spoonful. It is a song about how the magic of music can become the emotional link to a loving relationship. It is also an idea that can be applied to any number of things, leading to a loving and soulful connection between two people. “If you believe in magic, come along with me. We’ll dance until morning ’til there’s just you and me.”

Open is an award-winning love story by Crystal Skillman that uses magic as the emotional hook, taking an audience on a journey through the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of the challenges some people face in the pursuit of love in a socially and politically complicated world. In this case, two young women are drawn to each other by their love of the magical and mysterious.

Standing on an empty stage, as the audience enters, is Megan Hill, dressed in a tailcoat with lapels adorned with rhinestones and other shiny objects, and wearing a top hat. She is moving her hands and arms as if manipulating things in the air or possibly juggling invisible objects. Her eyes are closed, and as the auditorium lights dim, she opens her eyes and immediately engages the audience as The Magician.

It is an opening that invites the audience to enter the imaginative world being conjured by this magician. Are they witnessing the reality of a magician interacting with them, or are they being treated as objects of the magician’s imagination? She says, “Here you are. An audience. A kind of audience. Thank you for joining me. It’s incredible. Imagining you here.”

This idea of an imagined reality seduces the audience into a story of love found and then lost. It is a story of rediscovering an emotional core in a woman who has lost her sense of psychological grounding and is using her fascination with magic as an attempt to reattach herself to the real from the unreal.

As The Magician transitions between imagination and reality, Kristen, the creator of the magical world, guides the story of love and loss. Skillman seductively weaves the emotional elements of Kristen’s story effortlessly, leading the audience into an emotional rabbit hole of discovery, playing with the audience’s need to believe in magic even when the skillful words and actions of Hill are deceiving their eyes.

Jessi D. Hill’s masterful direction of Hill as Kristen (The Magician), coupled with the rock-solid sound design by Emma Wilk and lighting design by Sarah Johnston, delivers what appears to be a simple love story on the surface with an emotional gut-punch in the end. It is all accomplished on a bare stage through the skillful performance of Hill, supported by light and sound, with a solid dose of imagination on the part of the audience.

It touches deeply on issues of social acceptance and the realities of a world of rejection and hate, laying bare the consequences of a society that views gender differences as a threat to the social order. It is a play relevant to the times in which we live. What starts as a deceptively simple play with an almost amateurish feel on the surface ends with a powerful emotional impact. It is a show to be experienced by anyone interested in the dramatic possibilities of theater.

Open (through July 27, 2025)

Midnight Theatricals in association with The Tank and The Flying Carpet Theatre Company

WP Theater, 2162 Broadway, in Manhattan.

For tickets, visit http://www.opentheplay.com

Running time: 75 minutes without an intermission