What happens to a magician who loses his taste for the shazam of it all? What if, somewhere in midlife, he tires of the mystifying patter, the requisite razzle-dazzle, the sell? In the superbly elegant “A Simulacrum” (at Atlantic Stage 2, through July 9), Steve Cuiffo, New York theatre’s go-to illusionist, admits certain doubts to his longtime collaborator, the playwright Lucas Hnath—or, at least, he seems to. Hnath, who also directs, interviewed Cuiffo during their development process, and we hear an audio tape of those sessions as the magician, in person, re-creates his side of the conversations, including the same sleights of hand that he demonstrated for his co-creator. Like many magicians, Cuiffo obsesses over history and pedigree; when the (recorded) playwright asks him if he can create something totally original, Cuiffo’s worried eyes shift with annoyance—and something else. One card trick, he says, took him fourteen years to learn. Was that a waste? We think that we’re hearing the men’s intimate confessions, a candor that might be more legerdemain. But Cuiffo’s weary resignation at a lifetime spent perfecting illusions—that, I believe, is real for many of us.

— Helen Shaw, The New Yorker