Long Island Medium personality and, well, Long Island medium Theresa Caputo brought a good-sized crowd into Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre on Monday night. After she got through telling the audience all about her hair and her shoes, and how they could join her fan club for $19.99 (to be fair, she did say all proceeds go toward charity, such as Meals On Wheels) two cameramen came out and followed her around the arena as she asked audience members questions.
“I have no idea what’s going to happen,” she told the audience. She began to walk down the stairs and asked general questions such as, “Did somebody’s son drown?” This is where the words “mathematical crapshoot” come to mind: you’re sitting in an arena with a lot of people. You’re antsy to get bang for your buck. Of course someone—probably someone who has seen her show—is going to stand up and go, “Yeah, that’s me!” And, it happened. Maybe they were telling the truth; we don’t know, so we’ll give Caputo the benefit of the doubt there.
And, at times it did get impressive as the questions grew more and more specific toward that individual, most of which they nodded to, sometimes even while wiping away tears. I suppose if she had come around to me and asked about a friend or family member who had passed away, I would get emotional, too. If she called out details about that friend, it would strike the most vulnerable ventricles of my human heart. Which is how this sort of thing works.
But it got really interesting when looks of confusion would flood the face of the person she was talking to, and it would always happen, because everyone runs out of material eventually. Caputo’s tactic was most cunning. What she called spirits of the afterlife validating her questions—asking about specific examples from the deceased’s life, such as, “Did your husband wear brown pants and keep a billfold in his back pocket?”—was her way of moving along to another audience member while the person the camera was on stared blankly at her, as they did, time and time again.
Caputo’s stage presence was adequate, her voice boisterous; it made for an okay night of entertainment. But for anyone to suggest that she was actually talking to the dead would be a tragic miscalculation of skill.
She knew human psychology at its most basic roots, she took hints from clothes, from facial expressions. It was entertainment. And at times, she did a decent job of entertaining.
But going into detail about a family member’s suicide after asking the audience if they knew someone who died of a gunshot wound to the head does not mean there is anything supernatural about what she does.
It’s one thing to pay $40 to $90 to be entertained for an evening, but, frankly, if anyone in Victoria adds on the $19.99 for the fan club, maybe there are powers at work here that us mere mortals cannot comprehend after all.