IMPOSSIBLE
Noël Coward Theatre, London WC2

Opened 30 July, 2015
***

Despite this offering, and The Illusionists coming over from Broadway in the autumn, magic shows have all but vanished (ha) from the West End’s stages. I think I can see why, and that’s not the glib dismissal it may look like.

It is not that technology has overtaken live-action jiggery-pokery: seeing a car disappear in an instant in real life remains more impressive than seeing it happen on a cinema screen. Tricks can move with the times, as demonstrated in this turn-and-turn-about evening of routines by several illusionists; instead of sawing a woman in half, for instance, why not use a laser? Or when working with optical illusions, materialising and dematerialising objects, then deploy an array of iPads whose screens your apports can jump on and off.

No, the problem is similar to that which some people see in rock music, namely that all the great songs, or at least the great riffs, have already been written. For all the presentational changes that are rung, the basic repertoire here consists of the same long-familiar bunch of vanishing tricks, cabinet work, mentalism and close-up sleight-of-hand (a video wall helps in this respect – Ben Hart can go up to the Royal Circle to work with punters on his rope tricks while the rest of us watch on). That’s what no amount of pumping atmospheric music and Rubik’s Cube set design can refresh.

When it comes to the live drama aspect, the palette is even more limited. There are basically two types of magician: the assured, even self-regarding type that implicitly commands us to be impressed, and the faux-comedian who disarms us into approval by appearing to foul it up before pulling it off. The latter type is exemplified in Impossible by mentalist Chris Cox; as for the former, the non-silent variant on “assured” is the preferred mode, as with Ali Cook (whose pièce de résistance is the Houdini Water Torture escape, an explicit homage to the classics), whereas Jonathan Goodwin cultivates an approachable-hard-man image whilst shooting a balloon out of his wife’s mouth with a crossbow. It’s all thoroughly accomplished work of its kind, but its kind will not necessarily convert you if you aren’t already of the faith.
 
Written for the Financial Times.

Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights reserved.

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