4 Stars

KANE & ABEL: TWIN FEATS

☆☆☆☆

Kane & Abel’s Twin Feats has been a constant of the Edinburgh Fringe magic scene for, as is revealed in this year’s show, ten years. They have evidently built up a solid fanbase and reputation, with a strong crowd at the reviewed show on a midweek afternoon. While the theme remains constant, they do switch up the routines and effects, and this year’s is an especially strong lineup.

Of the magic performed, one of the clear highlights is their finale piece. It would be a shame to spoil it, but it’s a really fun take on a classic, with Kane & Abel leaning in to their stage characters while also delivering a truly impressive illusion, taking full advantage of having two performers in the act to perform something that wouldn’t even be feasible for their many solo colleagues. There are plenty of other great moments leading up to that, particularly the card magic. Kane & Abel perform an interesting twin-themed card routine. This is followed by card demonstrations that may not be card tricks in the traditional sense but feel more drawn from magic’s circus heritage, using cards to display both strength and balance in novel ways.

Audience participation is fairly frequent, without asking the participants to do any tasks that they would not expect to undertake at a magic show. Kane & Abel are both kind and welcoming when the audience joins in on their act. A participatory highlight is a mathematical and mind reading effect involving several audience members from their seats. The selection and involvement of the participants is unusual and fun, just the right amount of over-the-top to be both funny and respectful.

Twin Feats is a very strong show from two very experienced Fringe performers. It’s unusual, impressive, and of course magical. Kane & Abel did a fantastic job this year, this one is not to be missed for both their long term and new fans.

SAM KING: TRICKS & STUFF

☆☆☆☆

As a new performer to the Edinburgh Fringe and tucked away in a beautiful new PBH venue, Sam King might struggle slightly to attract a crowd on a sunny Thursday early evening for Tricks & Stuff. The people who do turn up quickly discover that it’s everyone else’s loss for missing it. One of the nice elements of the Fringe is that you might see a show and think, “surely that’s the weirdest thing here”, only to see something else that’s even stranger the next day. It’s difficult to imagine what could be weirder than Tricks & Stuff.

Without spoiling the strange surprises that King reveals throughout his show, it’s worth noting that the “& Stuff” in the title is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Sure, there are tricks, but they are primarily in service of the one-man play that King has concocted for his act. Those who saw the top hat on the flyer and expected a standard magic show may be disappointed. However, those who are willing to strap in for the ride get treated to a delightfully absurd experience. It’s appropriate for a magic show that the publicity and the actual show feels like a bit of a bait-and-switch: that’s just the first trick.

Depending on the size of the audience, most people may be called upon to take part in the show. On days with lighter numbers, some audience members may be called upon a few times. King is self-aware in his absurdity, while he himself says and does a lot of things that may be unexpected for a magician, everything he asks of his audience is expected and easily explained. At the reviewed show King even managed to get one of his younger audience members involved in an age-appropriate way, even though his show is really more designed for older children and adults.

The magic itself is all performed well. At the reviewed show King even performed an effect without the initial prop, which actually worked for him given the absurdist nature of his act. His take on a mentalist card trick is particularly fun. Plenty of magicians use their mouths for a varied reveal, but none the same way as King. This is well themed and placed toward the start of the show to gently indicate to the audience that it’s about to get a whole lot weirder shortly after.

The absurd humor and odd energy of King’s Tricks & Stuff make it an excellent addition to this year’s Fringe. While the plot elements may be very slightly confusing to follow, even allowing for the occasional interruption of the reviewed show, it still works because King knows he’s doing an absurdist show and makes sure the audience knows that he knows. King certainly has a creative approach to performing magic and is worth the time to watch.

CAMPBELL GLAZIER: TRICKSTER

☆☆☆☆

With a mid-evening time slot at a slightly less well known venue, a weekday performance of Campbell Glazier’s Trickster can be a fairly intimate experience. Such things happen at the busy Fringe. Luckily, Glazier is a skilled performer, and the audience size feels deliberate. Those who attend get the impression that Glazier would always make the audience size feel deliberate, whether it was just one person or hundreds.

Trickster focuses on card magic. There are interludes into a few other types to mix things up, but card magic seems to be Glazier’s specialty. It’s certainly very slick. Helpfully for those who go to magic shows to try to catch out the magician, the audience sits around Glazier’s table right up close to the action. Glazier even explains the tricks if the audience wants to learn how to do them. Less helpfully for those trying to catch him out, Glazier is very good at his job, and successfully hides his methods right up until he chooses whether or not to reveal them. A highlight is a series of card finding tricks that conclude in a dramatic shower of playing cards. The messy conclusion is worth it for the impressive result.

Glazier is notable for including a live rabbit in his show. It’s a fun play on the magician’s assistant trope without veering into animal cruelty. The rabbit is hilarious and Glazier’s interactions with it and an extra element of humor and charm to the show.

In such a small setting, audience participation is both especially inescapable and especially chill. Glazier makes his way around the audience a couple of times to select cards and complete other tasks to help him show off his tricks. He is notable for his excellent rapport with everyone in his audience. It’s worth noting that at the reviewed show at least one member of the audience was a friend of his, but your reviewer can confirm that at least one was not, and Glazier had an easy, natural charm with all.

It’s rare to get such a close up experience of card magic at the Fringe, especially at a PBH venue. Finding Trickster feels like finding a hidden gem. Glazier manages to make card magic exceptionally funny, this may just be the most you laugh in a card magic show. It’s perfectly timed and placed for Leith-based commuters to stop in on their way home for a laugh and some wonder. Trickster is well worth the time.

ARRON JONES: 1 HOUR STRAITJACKET ESCAPE MAGIC SHOW

☆☆☆☆

Arron Jones is back at it with the straitjacketed magic. With a lunchtime slot that puts it toward the beginning of the Fringe schedule, his 1 Hour Straitjacket Escape Magic Show is the most aggressively Fringe way to kick off the day. Jones does not take a full hour to escape from his straitjacket, instead performing the full hour of magic while trapped inside it. What follows is exceptional creativity, as Jones manages to perfectly execute a great variety of tricks with his hands literally tied behind his back.

The magic that Jones performs is largely recognizable to magic fans, which makes it even more interesting to see performed by a magician in a straitjacket. Card magic is of course a staple, and Jones manages to do a couple of tricks using these slippery little props. An early example features Jones nosing his way through the deck to find the chosen card, a visual that perfectly prepares the audience for the tone of the rest of the show. Jones’s brand of weirdness is self aware and the audience can see him consciously lean in to it, which makes even the extremes feel oddly relatable.

As Jones cannot use his hands for the duration of the show, audience participation is especially necessary. Creating the show feels like a collaborative, team building experience, with so much by necessity happening in the hands of the audience. Jones is the supportive team leader, guiding the hands of all who touch his props. At the reviewed show one participant slightly undercut his reveal by miscounting a deck of cards, an easy mistake to make with a set of props that has a habit of sticking together and moving erratically. Jones successfully pulled it back, with the participant’s help, making it clear that he had in fact gotten the trick correct.

Known as the Rockstar Magician in his other Fringe show, Jones’s love of music is evident in this show as well. He has a few bespoke tracks for various moments and tasks of the show that add a personalized flair to the proceedings. This straitjacket show is Jones’s nostalgic Fringe debut from a few years ago, and for those who caught that iteration, the “mix up the cups” song may have been stuck in their heads ever since. Jones dances along to each track, making every set up and reveal extra fun to watch.

1 Hour Straitjacket Magic Escape Show is one that every Fringe goer should see at least once. Jones’s style of showmanship is both unique and fun enough that it holds up well on a re-watch. It’s perfect for those who find themselves needing an early energy boost to get them through those mid-Fringe days.

THE GREAT DIVINATOR: TOUCHED BY SPIRITS

☆☆☆☆

Brought back to life by magician Katie Tranter, The Great Divinator has risen from the dead to entertain his audiences again. His Fringe show Touched by Spirits demonstrates his Victorian-era seance techniques to get in contact with the Other Side. It’s more silly than spooky, with plenty of well executed magic to keep the audience interested.

The magic in Touched by Spirits is used to illustrate the power and presence of said spirits on the earthly realm. It’s a very solid mix of both classics of the occult genre of magic and effects that are less commonly used seance-style shows, keeping it feeling fresh. The magic is all performed perfectly. One effect that particularly impressed the audience at the reviewed show involved The Great Divinator forging a spiritual connection between two audience participants, and using touch to prove it. One of the audience participants for this section was still raving about the effect as she left at the end of the show, and just how impressively impossible she had found her experience.

At the reviewed show the audience was a mix of living Fringe goers and raised spirits, so The Great Divinator was able to get a decent proportion of the living involved in the spiritualist effects. While the silliness of some of the participatory elements can feel a little unnatural at first, The Great Divinator embodies that playfulness in every movement, making it less intimidating for the audience to join in—he ensures that he will always be the silliest person in the room. The participants chosen visibly relaxed and got more into their roles the more they spent time around him. The reviewed show featured some unscheduled interruptions, whether from excited audience members or their mobiles, and The Great Divinator responded consistently, respectfully in character, making these interruptions feel like part of his own act.

Touched by Spirits is relatively light on magic to make sure there is plenty of room for spirits and silliness. It feels like the adult pantomime version of a seance, even when there’s no specific audience member summoned to the stage, there are plenty of moments when The Great Divinator gets everyone involved in creating the soundscape of his show. This makes for a very fun and unusual audience experience by magic show standards.

Between the Victorian seance-style magic and pantomime-adjacent performance style, Touched by Spirits is an intensely British cultural experience in the best possible way. The Great Divinator has distilled nearly all the good bits of British culture into one incredible experience. Touched by Spirits has a wide appeal, from magic fans looking for creatively performed tricks, to tourists looking to absorb a true sense of this country in just one hour, to anyone looking for some death-flavored joyfulness. The Great Divinator will lead the way.

ANDREW FROST: THE GREATEST CARD MAGICIAN IN THE WORLD

☆☆☆☆

It’s worth noting, to help with expectation management for his future audiences, that Andrew Frost has not been officially deemed The Greatest Card Magician in the World, despite that being the title of his show. However, ‘The Greatest Card Magician in the World’ may very well be one of the greatest card magic shows in the world, or at the very least at the Fringe—a line that Frost is of course more than welcome to selectively quote. What makes it compelling is not Frost’s position on any one person’s leaderboard of card magicians, but how he manages to make card magic so much fun.

As is heavily hinted in the title, in The Greatest Card Magician in the World Frost focuses on card magic. It’s as perfectly performed as the audience will expect from the title. A highlight is a routine that Frost invites multiple members of the audience to participate in. This manages the difficult task of providing a surprise of an ending in a card trick, a format perhaps known best for having the most easily anticipated ending of any magic trick.

Frost gets a lot of the audience involved in the show, and creates a welcoming environment to make this as unintimidating a process as possible. Frost is so personable that, at the reviewed show, a reluctant member of the audience agreed to join him onstage even when Frost allowed for a clear way out if the audience member truly didn’t want to be involved. While one audience participant does have a more involved role, Frost cleverly structures his routines to essentially go through a quick vetting process to pick someone who will be comfortable with the attention. Frost is always in control and the participants are not left at loose ends onstage.

The grandiose name of The Greatest Card Magician in the World isn’t just an attention-getting tactic, but a lead in for Frost to gently satirize magic show and audience tropes throughout the performance. From his spot on advice for audience members who are watching the show to try to work out how the tricks are done, to his teasing of the dramatic backstory for how he got in to magic, right up to the structure of the finale, Frost pokes fun at the stereotypes from a place of clear love for the art form.

It may not be as “shrekxy” as a burlesque show he’s contended with for reviews (what a sentence to experience out of context!), but for fans of card magic The Greatest Card Magician in the World is easily an excellent choice of Fringe show. Frost will teach the audience how to appreciate his card magic and then perform a trick so perfectly that they forget their lessons. It’s perfect card magic in a perfectly written show.

ASH PRYCE: OCCULT

☆☆☆☆

Edinburghers may know Ash Pryce by reputation even if they haven’t seen him personally, as a popular horror performer and magician. In Occult he brings these skills to bear nominally to initiate the audience into his demonic cult, but it’s really more than that. Fans of scary magic may seem to be the target audience, but there’s a lot to enjoy even for those who aren’t usually into that kind of thing. It’s an interesting and well constructed magic show of wide appeal.

The initiation process takes several steps, each with a matching magic effect. The magic is thoughtfully placed and well matched to the steps as Pryce describes them. Fans of magic, and those who have attended a lot of scary magic shows in particular, will probably recognize the structures of most if not all of the effects used. They’re the popular props of this sub-genre and the ones the audience expects to see in this kind of show. An effect that gets the entire audience involved uses tarot cards for mind reading, and spirit boards are successfully demonstrated to prove communication with the Other Side.

The familiarity of the tricks feels like the point; it’s a plus for this particular show. These trappings are a comfort zone for fans of Pryce’s work and sub-genre, which here he uses to help the audience feel safe, rather than frightened—the delicious cheese that hides the real theme. As part of the pleasure of this show is in the discovery of that theme, it would be a shame to reveal it here. The experience of the cheese should be preserved for future audiences. It’s certainly worth experiencing.

At his intimate Fringe venue Pryce is able to get most if not all of the audience involved over the course of the show. Pryce may seem an intimidating figure as he strides around the stage summoning a demon, but he is kind to his participants and helps them feel comfortable when they join in the act. If some of the participants at the reviewed show were slightly unsure of what to do, this is easily put down to variability of being human, and anyway Pryce quickly adjusted.

At the reviewed show of Occult Pryce has a moment out of his stage character at the end, revealing that this is in fact a work in progress and telling the audience a bit about how the show came about. It’s even more impressive for that knowledge. While those who aren’t close friends of Pryce may not have gotten the full backstory from watching the show, the theme and even the more immediate inspiration come through remarkably well. If this is just the WIP the final result should really be something special—no pressure. Fringe audiences are lucky to get this sneak peek.

TOM BRACE SAWS HIMSELF IN HALF

☆☆☆☆

There’s a big illusion in Tom Brace’s latest Fringe show, Tom Brace Saws Himself in Half, and chances are most of the audience will have guessed what it is by the time they have bought their tickets. With such a famous historical illusion the element of surprise is no longer available, as soon as anyone sees that table with a box on it they’ll know what’s about to happen, so what’s left is the showmanship. On this front, Brace certainly delivers.

As The Sawing happens right at the end of the show—Brace does not perform the entire show while sawn in half—there is plenty of time for him to demonstrate other effects. The goal of the show is to get himself in to the magic hall of fame, so Brace has put together a series of tricks that exemplify the relevant criteria. His favorite random number generator makes a return appearance for a numbers effect that gets the entire audience involved, to mass amazement, even with the necessary limitation of having just one person in the random number generator itself. In a show that plays on a classic magician/assistant illusion it feels especially fitting that this particular prop makes an appearance. If Brace could be said to have an onstage “assistant” in his career it would probably be that random number generator, which, while it cannot fit in an illusion, is in all other respects his constant, reliable sidekick.

Brace gets a few members of the audience involved, with the trip into the random number generator being the biggest task asked of any one of them. For that task he makes sure to pick from a pool of volunteers who demonstrated their willingness to be a part of the show via a pre-show task. Audience participants can be a tricky bunch, and at the reviewed show Brace had to deal with a participant who did not know the details of the ring she brought up for him to do magic on. Ever the professional, he had the audience laughing with her, and made sure to get his reveal completed suitably impressively.

With such an odd title, Brace takes a suitably slightly sarcastic approach to the magic that he performs in Tom Brace Saws Himself in Half. This builds to the event itself, in which he attempts an impossibility even by magic standards. While it would be a shame to reveal what happens in that moment, it’s a great take on this classic. Brace balances poking fun at the sketchy history of this effect with demonstrating it in a genuine, impressive way.

When watching the traditional version of the sawing in half illusion it’s easy to think, ‘maybe the coward waving the blades should take a turn in that box if he wants a share of the applause that comes after’. Tom Brace Saws Himself in Half is the show for people who have had that thought. It also feels like a love letter to magic as an art form, acknowledging its imperfections and mixed history and working from a place of affection to drive its progress forward. A magician sawing himself in half isn’t something that even magic fans see often, if ever. If you’re curious, you won’t be disappointed.

ANDY BOYD: THE PROFESSIONAL SHOWOFF

☆☆☆☆

Andy Boyd can do anything, probably…. Or at least that’s the impression that audiences will get after watching his show The Professional Showoff. A friendly and hilarious performer with a unusual breadth of skills, Boyd presents a range of entertainment feats across the genres of magic, juggling, and robotics.

While all of his routines are fun, the cutest are by far the ones with the robots. Boyd has built himself a robotic assistant—cultural commentary on the role of assistants in historic magic is perhaps implied with a raised eyebrow, but it’s not that kind of show—and this adorable helper successfully performs a magic trick of its own, with Boyd assisting in getting an audience member to participate. Boyd’s juggling and adjacent skills are impressive as well. He opens his show with a series of hoop tricks, and even those who have seen this prop used before will probably see new variations from Boyd. It’s very mildly intimidating for the audience but super cool to watch.

There is of course plenty of magic as well. Boyd’s card tricks are fantastic, and at times these blend with his other skills—as with the robot. Even when he’s just using the cards, the more physical elements of the performance have a flair that reveals his juggling abilities, with the particular skill he brings to these elements. His finale is so impressive that, at the reviewed show, audience members who arrived as strangers clutched each other in amazement.

Boyd gets a significant proportion of the audience involved to varying degrees. Luckily for the audience, they are not asked to come to the stage for any of the mildly intimidating bits, Boyd keeps all the difficult moments for himself. Boyd is a friendly performer and, at least at the reviewed show, seems to attract an especially friendly audience. Many bits of audience participation are performed from the seats, and none of the participation is scary.

Andy Boyd has such an infectiously high energy in The Professional Showoff, and everyone in the audience walks out smiling, looking in higher spirits than when they went in. It’s the kind of medley show audiences would usually expect from a group of performers, but here all done by one exceptionally skilled one. Boyd radiates pure joy. The Professional Showoff is the show to go to for an incredible time and a genuine energy boost.

DAN BASTIANELLI: IDENTITY

☆☆☆☆

Talented Fringe regular Dan Bastianelli returns this year with a show called Identity, in which he explores just that. With an interesting premise and great variety of magic, Identity makes for a fun hour of magic.

With flyer art featuring Bastianelli playing with his cards, it should come to no surprise to Identity audiences that playing cards feature heavily. Bastianelli is a skilled card magician, even impressing with his cardistry moves before he gets in to the magic. The card magic is a highlight, with magical classics performed with his distinct flair. Bastianelli varies the type of magic he performs with playing cards, to get a great deal of use out of this one type of magic. There is other magic too that uses a greater variety of props—audiences won’t be bored in Bastianelli’s audience.

The identity theme weaves in and out of the show, at times taking center stage, while at other times feeling more tangentially related to the effect being performed. A particularly strong moment of thematic magic is the restoration effect. The themes of being confident enough to be individual, and “destroying” the past self to become truer to one’s own nature, fit perfectly with the effect that Bastianelli performs. On the other hand, some of the routines seem to be explained to be related to identity simply because they are magic and being a magician is a part of Bastianelli’s identity. On the one hand, this feels like an appropriately cheeky use of theme for a magician, but after seeing Bastianelli advertise such an interesting theme it would have been nice to see it explored more deeply.

In an appropriately intimate venue for a show that involves so much close-up magic, and with Bastianelli’s friendly stage presence, the frequent participation in the show is not a concern for the audience. Audience members do all the usual tasks: picking cards, checking props, and letting Bastianelli read their minds. When Bastianelli distributes gifts to select participants, these are thoughtfully constructed pieces of magic, giving them impossible items to remember him by.

Identity is a lovely showcase of Bastianelli’s incredible range of magical talent. The reviewed show was unsurprisingly busy. Fans of close up in particular will appreciate Bastianelli’s latest.