‘Talent’ winner to become next Las Vegas magic star

Just because the Strip’s next headliner magician is young enough to squeeze himself into various contraptions doesn’t necessarily mean he will.

“There are other ways of giving things scale without jumping inside of a box,” says Mat Franco, the 26-year-old winner of “America’s Got Talent,” who this summer will launch a new show in a remodeled showroom at The Linq.

Today’s announcement includes two TV specials on NBC, the network where Franco became the first magician to win “Talent” last fall. The Las Vegas show will open June 24, with tickets going on sale April 22.

The magician who turns 27 in May works mainly on college campuses but did perform a one-night show with other “Talent” winners at Planet Hollywood Resort last September.

After that, Franco returned to the college circuit that’s been his main terrain since he graduated from college four years ago. Here, he plans to take advantage of the chance to do a fully staged show, “but what’s most important to me is keeping that same sort of improvisational, personal tone with the audience,” he said by telephone Thursday.

“I was always jealous of the fact that stand-up comedians could just go up there with nothing,” he said of his years of traveling light to work the college campuses. “I really do think doing the most you can with the least is a good sort of motto.”

Base Entertainment, local presenters of “Rock of Ages” and “Million Dollar Quartet,” will produce Franco’s show and renovate the theater which also hosts the drag show “Divas Las Vegas,” but last year had its early-evening slot vacated by the departure of Recycled Percussion.

The two NBC specials “Mat Franco’s Got Magic” will launch the Las Vegas show with network exposure usually reserved for major music stars. The first, Franco explains, is “basically a road trip from Rhode Island, where I’m from, to Las Vegas. … It’s sort of a way to travel across the country and thank people along the way” for voting for him on “Talent.”

The second special will be more about the process of “building up to the Las Vegas show and all the work that goes in behind the scenes that people don’t see.”

Read more from Mike Weatherford at bestoflasvegas.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com.