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For a career field of professional liars, magicians are not great at keeping secrets. Revealing bits of magic to make bigger reveals more impressive is a staple of the genre. Cavan Booth has even brought an entire show to the Fringe with the theme of revealing magical secrets, The Honest Magician. Booth’s emphasis on this one type of quasi-honest reveal makes for an interesting premise. Notably, he doesn’t venture far (if at all) beyond the quasi-reveals that are common amongst magicians. 

Booth uses a range of both mentalist and magic effects to make his point. While they may not be new to magic fans, they are performed well. An extended mind reading sequence to do with judging audience members’ truth telling and lying is especially fun to watch. The reviewed show had a great plot twist in this routine when Booth’s brother volunteered to join him onstage. While his brother was fairly clearly not giving him any hints, it seemed like a lovely supportive relationship, which is always nice to see at the Fringe.

Audience participation was a mixed bag. For some of the earlier effects, to demonstrate his point about the necessity of lying to performing magic, Booth performs a few tricks that are experienced as “magic” by the participants but not by the rest of the audiences. The method and purpose is clever, but it would be nice if Booth clued in the participants after making his point. Ideally participating in a magic show should enhance the experience for the participant, or at the very least be neutral—it’s not ideal when participating takes away an element of the experience of the show for someone. To be fair to Booth he seems to make a point of choosing participants for this section who seemed to have come to the show with a group, so their family and friends could tell them what happened after, but in a friendly town like Edinburgh where strangers tend to get chatty it’s a risky calculation.

Booth may have billed himself as honest but he’s still a magician, and luckily for the audience members who want to experience magic, there are some secrets that he keeps, and some that he reveals because the secret is itself an impressive feat. His demonstration of how to solve a Rubik’s cube in what looks like a few seconds is one such moment. The audience watched Booth carefully make a few turns to make the cube look well mixed, but even so watching him solve it in a throw demonstrates dexterity and dedicated practice.

The Honest Magician may not be flawless yet, but it’s an interesting premise from a clearly thoughtful performer. Booth does a good job telling the audience how his perspective is unique, but showing them this perspective through the magic is still a work in progress.