☆☆☆☆

Siegfried and Joy make a strong impression from the moment they step out on their Las Vegas in Edinburgh stage. Wearing instantly iconic outfits of gold suits, silver shoes, and purple velvet shirts and accessorized with star-shaped sunglasses, they dance around their stage performing bits of classic magic. Luckily the outfits compliment the magic rather than overshadow it. Like their classic outfits jazzed up with more glitter than any other magic act this Fringe, they take classic magic and jazz it up, lending the tricks their sparkling personality and making for an incredibly fun show.

Siegfried and Joy are equally instantly noticeable for the great relationship they build with the audience. Siegfried greets every audience member with a high five as they enter the venue, sizing them up and welcoming them in straight from the outset. At the reviewed show they also dealt well with audience interruptions during their set. One man in their front row had to step out midway through, and while they playfully hassled him on his way out, they also welcomed him on his return. They also faced a brief heckling from an excited child in the front row, and responded to it by first making him laugh in the moment and, later on, giving him a co-starring role in their finale that he was enthusiastic to partake in. Toward the end of the show, they did come across as mildly bullying a woman who didn’t seem to want to come onstage, but when they did pull her up she appeared to be having fun with them. That moment aside, they were perfect models of how gracefully to deal with the vagaries of a live audience.

They performed some excellent magic as well. From the very start, when Siegfried licks his scissors before dramatically cutting Joy’s rope, they perform with their perfectly, hilariously ridiculous Vegas-inspired style. They’re really a three-person operation, and the occasional appearance of a young woman throughout the show is a genuinely funny and respectful take on the “female assistant” trope. A highlight is their bottles and glasses effect, which is well performed by all of them—although they may look to take more care when removing these props after this section, to avoid breaking the illusion. In a strong effect featuring just Siegfried, Joy, and an audience participant, they perform a card finding effect that many magic fans will have seen before, but with an added wetness element that only serves to make the final reveal more impressive. A lot of the stage time is taken up with magic themed humor, with tricks designed to flash, but when they get down to it they also have some genuinely fantastic reveals.

The real highlight of the show is the perfect intersection of stage chemistry and showmanship that is evident in every step that Siegfried and Joy take onstage. They spin each other regularly, often start a new trick by rubbing noses, and create an amazing, excited atmosphere over the course of the hour.