Wardrobe Theatre, Bristol
So: I went to see a magic show.I was about to say "I haven't seen a magic show in years" but on reflection, I don't think I have ever seen one. Unless you count the children's entertainers at Butlins and in the Barnet Old Court Rec. But I grew up in the years when Paul Daniels and even David Nixon ruled the airwaves; and the first live show I ever saw in a theatre was Harry Corbett and Sooty. (Izzy, wizzy, let's get busy.) Certainly, Santa bought me a box of tricks one Christmas, and I was interested enough to borrow some fairly serious magic books from the local library.
I naturally assumed that magic depended on knowing a secret -- that David Nixon had a gimmick or a trick that he wasn't allowed to share, and that if I could find it out, I could perform the Cups and Balls with the same genial wit that he did. (The books told me that the cups and balls was the greatest of all tricks.) A bit like Jude the Obscure learning Latin. A bit of reading revealed that if you practiced every day for a year, it was possible to pick up a small cup with one hand while grabbing a small ball with your fingers and concealing it in your palm, so it would appear to the audience that there was nothing under the cup: and that once you had mastered sixteen or seventeen such techniques, you could do the whole routine.
Conjuring, in short, required practice, hard work and dedication, so I took up writing instead.
Peter Clifford has sold out the Wardrobe Theatre for four consecutive nights and comes recommended by both David Blaine and Derren Brown. (Did I mention that Derren Brown used to be in my writers group?) The title made me think that I was in for some kind of story-telling with tricks or possibly a narrative history of magic show. But what we actually got was two forty minutes sets of card and rope tricks, mind-reading and optical illusions. Clifford is an alumni of the much missed Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory -- I am pretty sure I saw him Prologuing in Troilus and Cressida many years ago -- and he has an actorly line in chat, jokes, and general fast talk. His very first trick involved unexpectedly producing a bottle of wine from inside a balloon; and when Theatre-Buddy exclaimed "that was good!" under her breath he immediately clocked her and promised the next one would be even better. But noticeably neither she nor I were selected for any of the for-the-this-trick-I-will-need-a-volunteer sequences.
A little reading is a dangerous thing: maybe the elementary conjuring books I took out of the library all those years ago have rendered me incapable of being completely baffled by it. Not that I have the faintest idea how any of it is done. But I do know that a skilled manipulator can "force" a particular card on a volunteer from an apparently well shuffled deck; or shuffle a pack of cards such that the one he wants comes to the top. The whole idea of the riffle shuffle makes me slightly suspicious.
The one in which the mark signs her name on a card, and the conjurer produces that card from a sealed envelope in his wallet in the pocket of his jacket is always astonishing. Although everyone does it, so it must be relatively straightforward, as tricks go. Clifford doesn't waste our time with pseudo science about neuro linguistic programming and mind control: he's quite clear that he's using tricks to fool us. Either he has genuinely memorised the entire text of the complete works of Shakespeare; or the book from which his volunteer is choosing random words has been doctored. I assume it wouldn't be hard to produce a "gimmick" edition with the same words at the bottom of every column.
I guess, like any art-form, a lot of conjuring depends on surprise and spectacle and not necessarily scratching too deeply below the surface. In the cold light of day, I can see that if you take eight cards numbered 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4 and re-order them in a known, repeatable sequence (one from the top to the bottom, two from the bottom to the top, discard the bottom one) you can predict matching pairs with perfect accuracy. But when every member of the audience is given four post-cards, asked to tear them in half and mix them, and then simultaneously reveal that the two halves they are left with fit together, the sense of everyone going "Ahhh!" simultaneously is palpable.
I liked the mentalism best. Three members of the audience are invited onto the stage, asked to imagine a dream or aspiration, and then to write two words and a sketch on a piece of paper. After dismissing two from the stage, he was able to accurately guess what the third person had chosen. Uri Geller does a similar trick by following eye movements ("look into my eyes and mentally draw the picture on an imaginary TV screen") but this didn't seem to be what Clifford was doing. I'm inclined to believe that it was genuinely piece of cold-reading; based on the mark's age and appearance, and a certain amount of "fishing" ("I think it's something outdoors related?")
And I remain genuinely baffled by the member of the audience who was asked to get up out of his seat whenever he felt like it and write the precise time on a large envelope: the envelope, of course, contained a clock which had been pre-set to that time.
I suppose one shouldn't approach magic as a puzzle to be solved. The evening provided a large number of laughs, of small oos and bigger aahs and one or two how-the-hell-did-he-do-that moments. I definitely had a good time, and maybe won't leave it forty years before I go to another one.
Please note that I got right through this review without once succumbing to the temptation to use the word "prestidigitation".
Peter Clifford has sold out the Wardrobe Theatre for four consecutive nights and comes recommended by both David Blaine and Derren Brown. (Did I mention that Derren Brown used to be in my writers group?) The title made me think that I was in for some kind of story-telling with tricks or possibly a narrative history of magic show. But what we actually got was two forty minutes sets of card and rope tricks, mind-reading and optical illusions. Clifford is an alumni of the much missed Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory -- I am pretty sure I saw him Prologuing in Troilus and Cressida many years ago -- and he has an actorly line in chat, jokes, and general fast talk. His very first trick involved unexpectedly producing a bottle of wine from inside a balloon; and when Theatre-Buddy exclaimed "that was good!" under her breath he immediately clocked her and promised the next one would be even better. But noticeably neither she nor I were selected for any of the for-the-this-trick-I-will-need-a-volunteer sequences.
A little reading is a dangerous thing: maybe the elementary conjuring books I took out of the library all those years ago have rendered me incapable of being completely baffled by it. Not that I have the faintest idea how any of it is done. But I do know that a skilled manipulator can "force" a particular card on a volunteer from an apparently well shuffled deck; or shuffle a pack of cards such that the one he wants comes to the top. The whole idea of the riffle shuffle makes me slightly suspicious.
The one in which the mark signs her name on a card, and the conjurer produces that card from a sealed envelope in his wallet in the pocket of his jacket is always astonishing. Although everyone does it, so it must be relatively straightforward, as tricks go. Clifford doesn't waste our time with pseudo science about neuro linguistic programming and mind control: he's quite clear that he's using tricks to fool us. Either he has genuinely memorised the entire text of the complete works of Shakespeare; or the book from which his volunteer is choosing random words has been doctored. I assume it wouldn't be hard to produce a "gimmick" edition with the same words at the bottom of every column.
I guess, like any art-form, a lot of conjuring depends on surprise and spectacle and not necessarily scratching too deeply below the surface. In the cold light of day, I can see that if you take eight cards numbered 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4 and re-order them in a known, repeatable sequence (one from the top to the bottom, two from the bottom to the top, discard the bottom one) you can predict matching pairs with perfect accuracy. But when every member of the audience is given four post-cards, asked to tear them in half and mix them, and then simultaneously reveal that the two halves they are left with fit together, the sense of everyone going "Ahhh!" simultaneously is palpable.
I liked the mentalism best. Three members of the audience are invited onto the stage, asked to imagine a dream or aspiration, and then to write two words and a sketch on a piece of paper. After dismissing two from the stage, he was able to accurately guess what the third person had chosen. Uri Geller does a similar trick by following eye movements ("look into my eyes and mentally draw the picture on an imaginary TV screen") but this didn't seem to be what Clifford was doing. I'm inclined to believe that it was genuinely piece of cold-reading; based on the mark's age and appearance, and a certain amount of "fishing" ("I think it's something outdoors related?")
And I remain genuinely baffled by the member of the audience who was asked to get up out of his seat whenever he felt like it and write the precise time on a large envelope: the envelope, of course, contained a clock which had been pre-set to that time.
I suppose one shouldn't approach magic as a puzzle to be solved. The evening provided a large number of laughs, of small oos and bigger aahs and one or two how-the-hell-did-he-do-that moments. I definitely had a good time, and maybe won't leave it forty years before I go to another one.
Please note that I got right through this review without once succumbing to the temptation to use the word "prestidigitation".
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