The Langham, Jakarta

The Langham, Jakarta is now Open

The hotel’s opening offer “Celebration” will allow guests to experience the best of the hotel. The package starts at IDR3,400,000++ per night and includes an overnight stay in a beautifully appointed room with early check-in and late check-out privileges, a IDR500,000++ dining gift at the stand-out restaurant Tom’s or at Alice. The special offer features breakfast at Tom’s at Level 62 with a stunning sunrise panoramic view across Jakarta.

Guests are welcomed by a 10-metre-high lobby with magnificent interior detailing and chandeliers by Lasvit, the renowned creators of breathtaking bespoke light installations. The Langham, Jakarta features exceptional celebrity restaurant partnerships that include Tom’s by Tom Aikens, the culinary maestro who has guided his restaurants to accolades by the Michelin Guide, and T’ang Court, inspired by its Three Michelin Starred Cantonese restaurant namesake at The Langham, Hong Kong, will make its debut into Southeast Asia.

Afternoon tea aficionados may bask at the beautiful environs at Alice, the grand dining emporium; those familiar with the Artesian at The Langham, London –recognized as the World’s Best Bar for several years – will delight in knowing that its latest outpost will be at the dazzling rooftop of The Langham, Jakarta where the best views of the sunsets can be enjoyed with signature cocktails.

Featuring 223 guest rooms including the splendid and elegantly appointed 336-square metre Presidential Suite, The Langham is strategically located within the prestigious new complex of District 8 at SCBD (Sudirman Central Business District) with easy access and close proximity to the city’s most important financial, cultural and entertainment centres.

The Langham Club lounge on the hotel’s 59th floor will be a private and luxurious haven for guests who prefer a discerning level of comfort with panoramic and unobstructed views of Jakarta City. There is a writer’s corner, a reading library and private arrival and departure facilities with dedicated butlers for personalized service. Chuan Spa provides treatments inspired by Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) philosophies in a serene, meditative setting. The 670 square metre (7,211 square

foot) spa will offer private treatment rooms as well as a fully-equipped fitness centre and Jakarta’s highest indoor infinity pool with spectacular views of the city.

The Langham, Jakarta is the new iconic venue for social events, weddings, high-level conferences and luxury product launches. Featuring more than 2,100 square metres of flexible space, including a magnificent 688 square metre ballroom and a beautiful outdoor garden, there are an additional eleven meeting rooms that can be configured for events of different sizes.

Guests who wish to stay or hold their event at The Langham, Jakarta Telephone +62 21 2708 7888 Email: tljkt.reservation@langhamhotels.com or visit:

www.langhamhotels.com/en/langham/jakarta/

Magic, Mischief and Carefully Controlled Mayhem…

As hit West End show Magic Goes Wrong embarks on a national tour, legendary magicians Penn and Teller reveal how they found themselves working with the team behind The Play That Goes Wrong, and how they came to cast their spell on audiences...

Over five decades, legendary magicians Penn & Teller have been sawing the magic rulebook in half. Their shows combine bamboozling illusions with dark comedy, their magic often seems to go horribly wrong, and they have become notorious for repeatedly revealing to the audience exactly how their tricks are done - which has long prevented them from being members of the Magic Circle.

Not that they mind. In fact, they revel in the illusion of chaos: one of their stage shows began with a giant fridge falling on the pair, apparently crushing them.

So, when they announced in 2019 that they were teaming up with Mischief, the British team behind theatre smash hits The Play That Goes Wrong, Peter Pan Goes Wrong and The Comedy About a Bank Robbery, as well as the BBC One TV series The Goes Wrong Show, it seemed like a perfect match. The result was Magic Goes Wrong, which opened in the West End to rave reviews and is now casting its spell on audiences across the UK.

In Penn & Teller's live shows, Penn Jillette takes the role of motormouth patter-merchant, while Teller (that one word is now his legal name) remains silent as they perform various breathtaking illusions. Many of their acts have become iconic - check out the cup and ball trick on YouTube, where Penn reveals exactly how the trick is done, and still manages to make it dazzling - and many involve comic danger, gore and violence. In one trick they aim guns at each other’s face, fire and catch the bullets in their teeth. A few years ago they were performing in London, and Penn’s family decided they wanted to see a show in the West End. “I don't go to comedy theatre at all,” says Penn. “I like theatre to be deadly dull, slow and depressing. But my wife and children picked The Play That Goes Wrong. I realized that not only was my family laughing harder than I've ever seen them, but I was too.” He immediately told Teller to book a ticket.

Despite being known for his onstage silence, it was Teller who started discussions with Jonathan Sayer, Henry Shields and Henry Lewis, the artistic directors of Mischief. “I am more shy than Teller so it never crossed my mind to go backstage,” Penn jokes, “but Teller took himself backstage and said, ‘hey I'm a star!’”

Teller insists it wasn’t quite like that: “As I was sitting in my seat, someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘You're Teller, aren't you? The cast wants to give you free ice cream.’ So afterwards I went backstage to thank the cast and compliment them, because it really was one of the finest shows I've ever seen.”

What’s more, Penn had mentioned to Teller that the show featured a magic trick. “He told me there's a moment where a person reappears in a grandfather clock, and it’s going to fool you,” Teller explains. “And he was right, it absolutely fooled me. So, I said to the Mischief guys, ‘You do stuff that is so much like magic, we should do something together sometime’.”

A few months later, all five of them were eating homemade pancakes at Teller’s Las Vegas house and plotting a brandnew show.

adding the trademark Goes Wrong approach, all the tricks in the show had to work on two levels: there had to be the trick that goes wrong, and then the trick that actually dazzles the audience. So how did they devise these illusions?

Teller explains that it’s often quite a laborious process. “You get an idea, which is usually quite grand, then you find that it's impossible, and you revise it over and over again until it works. There's a trick in the show where one of the cast members gets accidentally sawed in half by a buzzsaw. That was more than a year of work. Part of the trick involves blood, but if you just show the blood on stage it looks boring, it has no impact at all. So a big part of the buzzsaw trick for us was developing it in such a way that when the blood came, it would be sprayed up against a huge backdrop where you could truly enjoy the bright red colour.”

Speaking of blood and buzzsaws, Magic Goes Wrong - which takes the form of a disastrous fundraising benefit - is definitely more comically gory than Mischief’s previous work. Was that Penn and Teller’s influence? “Guilty,” says Penn with a huge grin.

“I'm afraid it might have something to do with us,” Teller adds. “We think that gore is essentially funny. It's really hard to pull off serious gore in the theatre because people tend to want to laugh. They know that it's fake, but they see that it looks real. And that's very much like a magic trick.”

That clash - of instinct and intellect - is what Penn & Teller's work thrives on. “What you want to do is get the visceral and the intellectual to collide as fast as possible,” says Penn. “It's like being on a rollercoaster: I'm safe, no I'm not, I'm safe, no I'm not. Those two parts of your body are fighting.”

But despite the fact that Mischief and Penn & Teller have built their careers on making it look like everything is going horrifically wrong, they all insist that mishaps are incredibly rare in real life. “While we're rehearsing we might get a minor cut or bruise,” Teller says. “But we don't ever allow the possibility of something going seriously wrong because if we did, we wouldn't have been working successfully for 46 years.”

For Penn, what makes Magic Goes Wrong seem so right is the combination of magic and comedy. “It's a full magic show and a full comedy show happening at the same time.”

Teller explains that there is a deeper, more unexpected layer to the show: “What's interesting to me is how well the show reflects the actual culture of the magic world. It’s mostly populated by well meaning, very nice amateurs. And there is a great, heart-tugging beauty about that to me. The poignancy of the magic trick that isn't quite achieved, where your aspirations are to behave in a godlike manner, and instead you're slapped in the face by reality - I think that's such a beautiful thing. That's what this show is about. It has all these laughs and all these wild crazy moments, but when it lands at the end, it's about the sweetness of friends who love magic.”

Magic Goes wrong is appearing at Milton Keynes Theatre from Tuesday 19th to Saturday 23rd October 2021, tickets are available from www.atgtickets.com/MiltonKeynes.