Derek DelGaudio uses a little magic and a lot of storytelling to talk about identity in In & Of Itself.

Derek DelGaudio uses a little magic and a lot of storytelling to talk about identity in In & Of Itself.

The cards they kept were placed in a little stack.

And they've managed to do something that's always hard with filmed theater and seemed like it was going to be almost impossible here: They've made this version feel very, very much the way one of the most powerful theatrical experiences I've ever had felt when I was in the room.

I don't want people to tell me their guesses.

So I don't want to tell you too much about the elephant, or the brick, or the boat, or the moment in the film when you can see a familiar audience member's hand shaking with emotion?

But the feeling was entirely genuine, in that it activated a part of me that craved that moment of being seen and identified and recognized as myself, and that's what you see in the often emotional reactions of DelGaudio's audience in the film.

Not often but occasionally, you'll see quick cuts through the same moment in the show as it happened during a bunch of performances, generally to demonstrate how it looked with all different people in the audience.

It's an effective technique, partly because it can put to rest some theories about how some of the show's magic might have been accomplished (no, it was not the same person in that seat or in this situation every night) and partly to emphasize over and over one of the things that makes live theater special, which is that each performance only exists relative to its audience, especially with something like this.

In less expert hands, that could break the film by making each individual moment feel interchangeable, but director Frank Oz — who was also DelGaudio's partner in the production of the original show — knows how to deploy those techniques sparingly, so that you're just briefly reminded that this reality was created over and over, and it was always a little different