Hotel magicians are not generally perceived as competition for Houdini. Witness Otto Marvuglia, the failing magician at the center of Grand Magic, who makes a female guest at a resort in Naples disappear by accident (as she waits out the trick in the magician’s offstage box, her lover swoops in and secretly takes her on a trip to Venice that lasts four years). Written in 1948 by the beloved Italian actor, writer, and director Eduardo De Filippo, the play sees Marvuglia blurring fact and fiction as he tries to convince the woman’s husband—and local police—that she’s been missing for days instead of years. The Stratford is using a new translation of the play, which Antoni Cimolino directs. —Jensen Davis