I have just read Flim Flam: Houdini and the Hereafter, the newly published edition of a play written by Gene Franklin Smith. Flim Flam premiered at the Malibu Playhouse last year to good notices, and it ran from June into August. I can see why – it is fun and engaging.

(Full disclosure: I have known and admired Gene Smith for years. When I started dating the woman whom I married 30 years ago (we are still married), she was house-managing a production of his play Life Beneath the Roses in New...