Penn and Teller aren't just world-beating magicians, they're debunkers of magic, out to cure us of our credulity. One might generously speculate that this is why they've recycled much of the material for this show – anyone who saw their last UK offering, four years ago, gets a second chance to deduce how the tricks are pulled off. What we don't get is as high a gasp factor. There are still some wonderfully baffling set-pieces – but (at least for we second-timers) there's also more time to notice Penn Jillette's overheated patter, deployed to interminably defer this or that feat of fire-breathing, bottle-juggling virtuosity.
Boy, can this man talk, and not always to the dramatic advantage of the spectacle. One of the several new routines finds him spouting theoretical physics, which Teller illustrates with card tricks. A later routine in which Penn guesses which joke punters have randomly selected from a joke book devolves into a lecture about the moral iniquity of spiritualists. The real beneficiary of all this boilerplate is Teller, whose gentler, poetic routines are twice as enjoyable by dint of their total silence. He's a lovely, subtle performer, and his needle swallowing routine – or the skit when he trims petals from a flower's shadow – are very charming.
The highlights elsewhere are a terrific opener relocating a volunteer's phone to the inside of a fish; and a trick with metal rings, constructed to dupe one lady from the audience to the amusement of the rest of us. There are faltering moments, too – a saw that doesn't cut deep enough to slice a woman in two; some coins whose transformation into goldfish is fractionally mistimed (although it's still a marvel). There's plenty to enjoy here. But I'd have welcomed more new tricks from these old dogs. And the ratio of windbaggery to magic is a little too high.
• Until 22 June. Box office: 0844 844 0444. Venue: Hammersmith Apollo, London.
• That's not magic: Penn, Teller and Derren Brown reveal all (or do they?)
