CHICAGO — Let us be clear about one thing from the start. Chicago, a city with an auspicious past and present of prestidigitation and legerdemain, has never before had a space for magic anything close to The Hand & The Eye.

And where else in town can you hear a line like “as the fork melts, the shrimp un-fries,” and then watch it happen?

I’ve already written about Broadway designer David Rockwell’s stunning interiors within creator Glen Tullman’s opulent, $50 million renovation of the McCormick Mansion on the corner of Ontario and Rush streets, most recently the home of Lawry’s Prime Rib, although you’d never know. Once you add a dress code that obligates humans to be dressed to the nines, the effect is akin to walking through a kind of “Eyes Wide Shut” dreamscape, if you will — a costly adult playground of bespoke cocktails (The Spade! The Diamond!) and fancy trickery with dinner on the side.

The service is exemplary, and the mansion was far from overcrowded on Friday night. One felt seen. Or watched, depending on your point of view. For some around me, being watched was certainly not a pejorative but the intent of their attire. That’s kind of the idea here. And the joint also was lousy with magicians, not all of whom were performing.

I see a lot of magic and recognized some faces. Others were called out from one of the stages. Still others, some hobbyists, struck up a conversation and described their devotion to the form and their curiosity about a new high-end operation that clearly has made ripples within their close-knit community by offering optimal performance conditions that journeymen magicians rarely enjoy in, say, your average hotel ballroom purloined for a corporate sales conference.

By happenstance, I sat next to a mentalist the following night at a party; he was dying to know what The Hand & The Eye had been like and peppered me with questions. I resisted the temptation to suggest he read my mind.

My experience Friday night lasted from a 5 p.m. start until close to 11 p.m. (Available entry times most nights are between 5 and 7 p.m.) The Hand & The Eye sells these “full experience” tickets for around $239, including a $75 credit toward drinks and a full dinner in the in-house restaurant, catered by Levi Restaurants. That surely would not cover most full tabs, especially given the many elegant bars in the place, all of which had a spectacular array of costly, top-shelf booze (aged Macallan, Ratafia, WhistlePig PiggyBack bourbon) and bespoke cocktails that would put any first-class Chicago hotel to shame. So would pianist Josh Shapiro, tickling the ivories as one wandered, to the limited extent one was allowed to wander. One is tightly programmed.

The assumption here is that you are up for a lot of magic in your evening. On my itinerary, for example, there were five shows in five venues, each more magnificently appointed than the last.

My night began with Garrett Thomas in one of the bars, known as the Red Herring. A gentle spirit, Thomas is very much in the Eugene Berger school of magic. That doesn’t just mean placing an emphasis on storytelling — there are only so many tricks in the world, so most magicians figure out fast that the narrative is what matters — but as a two-way exploration of empathy. One of the first things I heard Thomas say before he pulled out his Rubik’s Cube and magic coins was, “What is a magician for?,” a question that then lingered with me all night. Good for Thomas for asking.

Dinner came next. The menu has a historic Chicago vibe (think Parker House rolls, Chicken Vesuvio and Baked Alaska) served on Italian china in a glamorous room, an intentional throwback to the hotel ballrooms of lost Loop nights out of old. There was room for more kick to my Vesuvio sauce, and we certainly are not talking Homaro Cantu (may he rest in peace) levels of transformational narrative gastronomy here. If we were, we’d surely be adding another $200 to the tab. But the service could not be better and it’s a fortifying meal. (Other choices include Wild Alaskan Halibut; nothing is terribly over-priced.)

Still, the entrees at dinner could take some more risks and compete more with magic being the main event. I still remember Steve Wynn’s amazing, now defunct, eatery at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas that literally changed decor with each course. That would have been even a few more million bucks on top of what already looks more like a philanthropic civic act more than a savvy investment on Tullman’s impassioned part, but an enthusiastic punter can dream.

After dinner, I was whisked to the next show in the Chamber, a fabulous room for close-up table magic, here presided over by Jeff Kaylor, the artistic director of all the magic here and a highly skilled performer himself who embodies better than anyone the vibe the place covets: Edgy, smart, fast-paced, racy, intriguing, intellectually stimulating.

Thereafter, in the mid-sized Colosseum, came Armando Lucero, a magician’s magician and a longtime favorite at the Magic Castle in Los Angeles. The veteran Lucero is more introverted (by design) than Kaylor but he is revered by other magicians for his work to elevate his profession, his dedication to his craft, his disdain for commercial competition among magicians, the sophistication of his narratives and the depth of his thinking about his art (or science).

It was a privilege, frankly, to watch him work in such deferential surroundings. I suspected his presence on the bill explained why so many other magicians were here.

Lucero’s cards and coins came and went and I headed next to Room 36, Orwellian echoes banished as Richard Ostlind, a 78-year-old mentalist and another revered teacher in the field, appeared. Ostlind, too, was a sweet delight. A maestro of the mind, indeed. With decades of experience.

The Hand & The Eye has more work to do when it comes to its mainstage, the Monarch, a faux-proscenium room that Friday featured the magician and street-performer Erick Olson, Boston’s Felice Ling and Ohio’s Tony Steinbach, who spun plates, although presumably not the aforementioned costly china. All three of these performers were fun, but once we move into a more traditional theatrical environment, the imperative for slicker stage management and production values intensifies beyond what this venue has yet figured out how to do. One headline act, I think, would suffice in this space and would solve the messy change-over issues.

The other issue that cropped up Friday for me was repetition. I heard the same joke more than once and saw too many variations on the same coin-based tricks, all splendidly executed — but still. Magicians, of course, tend to be solo operators who are not used to coordinating their shows with anyone else, but if this venue is serving up a multi-performer experience, it will have to watch for that issue and find ways to ensure everything feels fresh and wondrous.

The Hand & The Eye has yet to open its grand top level, and I didn’t even go down to The Vault in the basement on Friday night, the location of the happy hour magic shows. As the place evolves and gets buzzier, one hopes, I’d also add more socializing downtime between shows and offer myriad casual encounters exploring different levels of formality within the mansion gestalt. Ideally by younger magicians.

So The Hand & The Eye is a work in progress. Still, anyone who loves magic and its historic role in this city would surely want this remarkable venture to thrive. It’s like nowhere else I’ve been, like nothing else we have, and, unlike so many of the new “immersive” entertainment attractions in the city, entirely based on old-school, person-to-person interaction.

To wit: I’ve rarely been in such an Instagrammable interior and yet Tillman insists on no photos by attendees. Especially of anyone doing magic. (No new photos were allowed to accompany this review.) It’s all a gamble that the curious will dress up, show up to be fooled and coaxed into sipping a cocktail and wondering what it all might mean.

—Chris Jones is a Tribune critic

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