☆☆☆☆

Newcomers to the Edinburgh Fringe Ricardo Malerbi and Rudi Solon are tackling the dark side of deception in their show Honest Fraud. Every magician commits fraud against their audience, but at least in a magic show the audience is signing up for it. This is the dynamic that Malerbi and Solon explore. They make examples of real life fraud into entertainment, so their audience gets to examine fraudulent scenarios in the safe environment of a magic show. As a theme it has a lot of potential, and if Malerbi and Solon make a few detours, it’s no problem for the audience, who are along to enjoy the ride.

Malerbi and Solon use plenty of audience participants, and make participation particularly fun. The fun starts in their selection method. As Brazilians, they celebrate one of the cutest of their country’s native creatures, the capybara, throughout the show. There are several capybaras onstage, with the smallest and softest being tasked with participant selection. This mundane element of magic shows becomes newly adorable in Honest Fraud. Once selected, participants have a great time onstage with Malerbi and Solon, taking care to be the eyes of the audience and inspecting the magic tricks for any undisclosed deception.

The magic performed is interestingly personalized. An early highlight is a coin trick performed in Malerbi and Solon’s native Portuguese. For those who don’t speak Portuguese this would be an especially interesting section to bring a Brazilian friend to, to compare notes with. However, even those who couldn’t understand the words could enjoy the trick. This was a great demonstration of magic as a universal language, and the power of a well executed sleight. Malerbi and Solon also inject a lot of humor into their magic, most notably in a second series of coin tricks involving an audience participant selecting coins for them to mind read the color and values off of. The hilarious ending works so well due to their flawless demonstration of their mentalist skills moments earlier.

Honest Fraud has an interesting theme, but it could be developed further over the course of the show. The detour into coin and money themed magic is sensible enough as money is so often the goal of real-life fraudsters, but the effects, as impressive as they are, don’t feel like a real continuation of the theme. That being said, audiences looking to be wowed by magical reveals won’t be disappointed, and indeed the overwhelming chatter amongst those leaving the reviewed performance was of amazement at the reveals throughout the show.

It’s always exciting to welcome new performers to the Fringe, and Malerbi and Solon’s debut is no different. With their distinctive style and humor they fit right in with just how much they stand out. Audiences will leave in amazed delight and excited to see what they bring next.