Billy Reid

BILLY REID: WATCH CLOSELY

☆☆☆☆☆

Good art thrives when it is communicating, is connecting. Good art thrives when it surpasses the individual and is made accessible to the collective. Although it may take some convincing to even get everyone to agree that magic is art, and can be good art, it cannot be debatable that Billy Reid’s show Watch Closely most certainly is. But what’s more, Watch Closely exceeds good art to become great, and exceeds thriving to absolutely bring magic to life in the eyes and, in some cases, hands, of those that get to witness it.

The title Watch Closely sounds at first like the issuing of a challenge. Watch closely, because the magician is here to trick you- will you be able to catch him? But that is not actually anything close to the sentiment of Reid’s show.  Reid does not present magic as a challenge to be beat. His performance is uncommonly personal, with almost all effects tying into the narrative Reid weaves about his family, his childhood, memories about both his upbringing and more recent experiences that stayed close to his heart.

Although the story that ties Reid’s magic together is so personal to him, that does not make it inaccessible to others. In fact, quite the opposite. Reid is able to cast a spell over his audience that brings them with him on every trick, every tale, every tone shift. At the performance reviewed, the room was full and the audience amiable and excited. Reid engaged well with this energy, bantering with his crowd and taking advantage of the boisterousness for the lighthearted effects. But when moments required a little more calm, a little more focus, Reid was even still able to lead all his spectators into the appropriate mentality, a much more impressive feat.

All his authentic charisma would be for naught without genuine talent, which luckily Reid has in spades (a heinous pun for which we do not apologise.) Reid’s takes on card tricks, his rendition of the oldest magic trick in the world, and really all tricks that are performed in Watch Closely are performed with, if not total technical perfection, so close as to be nearly indistinguishable from it. And Reid’s effects are performed with similarly spectacular beauty. Reid mentions a love for visual art in this show, and proves this by integrating art thematically into the tricks performed. Not only does he do an homage to a favourite artist, but one of his closing pieces features his own foray into drawing. The pictures created aren’t bad themselves, but what he does with them through magic is absolutely incredible.

Watch closely, Reid insists. Not just for this show, this hour, but through your own life. Not to catch a trick, but to catch a moment. To keep each memory as alive as the magic he creates.

 

More information on Billy Reid and his performance dates can be found here.

BILLY REID: WATCH CLOSELY

☆☆☆☆☆

It takes a good magician to entice a busy Edinburgher to Glasgow on a Wednesday evening. Luckily, Billy Reid is worth the trip.  Reid makes his audience for Watch Closely feel welcome as soon as they step through the door, taking the time to learn as many people’s names as possible.  This allows him to address many of his participants by name when inviting them to take part in his show, giving the entire performance a pleasantly intimate and relaxed atmosphere.

The majority of Watch Closely is close-up card tricks, which Reid performs with neatness and style.  Reid lists the awards that he has received for his magic at the beginning of his performance, but he does not really need to, as his evident skill speaks for itself.  Reid’s card tricks set the standard for precisely performed magic, and his storytelling and comedy are executed with the same dexterity, ensuring that the energy of his performance remains constant as he transitions between tricks.  Watch Closely is narratively and thematically cohesive, as Reid uses stories from his life to gradually guide the audience toward the inspiring message with which he ends the show.

If you are a magic fan, you’ve probably seen some of the same tricks repeated often, especially if you see the same magician more than once. But Reid’s tricks are so visually beautiful that watching them again is a joy more similar to that of revisiting a piece of art at a museum.  The use of color in a trick themed on childhood memories of outdoor adventures sets this tone, and it is epitomized in Reid’s incredible illustrated deck that is always a highlight.

Every so often the right performer at the right time is more than entertainment, but also an inspiration to their audience to view the world differently, or the medium to help them process emotions that they might not have even known needed processing.  Reid conveys all of this intensity with his trademark artistry, in what is still unmistakably and unapologetically a magic trick.  The title of his show initially sounds like standard magician bravado, challenging his audience to catch his sleight of hand.  By the end of the evening the double meaning becomes clear, that Reid uses his magical skills to encourage his audience to pay closer attention to their own lives.

 

More information on Billy Reid and his performance dates can be found here.

THE SECRET ROOM AT LAURISTON CASTLE

☆☆☆☆

MagicFest’s Secret Room events are fantastic, as the chosen venues lend a theme to the performances, and the addition of the historical lessons of the buildings ensure that the evening is about more than magic.  This second point is especially true for the Secret Room at Lauriston Castle.  The event features three magicians, but the castle itself is the fourth star of the show.

The audience is first led into the study, where Billy Reid begins the evening’s magic.  Reid is perhaps the most true to theme.  Inspired by a historical cabinet maker who lived at Lauriston Castle, he incorporates a wooden puzzle into his act, and he concludes with a coin trick inspired by the lost coin collection of one of the castle’s former residents.  Reid’s gorgeous illustrated card trick sequence set to “Caledonia” is a highlight, working particularly well in this smaller venue.

The drawing room of the castle barely contains the boisterous character of Ian Kendall.  His tricks are classic, featuring cups and balls or ropes and rings, but his jokes keep the audience laughing, and his rapport with the group draws everyone into the performance.  Kendall does integrate a bit of a history lesson in to his act, and expresses suitable admiration for the room that he is performing in, but only very tenuously links his tricks to the history of the venue.  He makes this work as his larger-than-life personality easily distracts the audience from any thematic absence.

Chris Cook concludes the performances of the evening in the castle’s library.  The tidy precision of Cook’s magic style is exceptionally effective with this smaller audience.  In keeping with the theme, Cook uses an audience participant’s phone for his final trick, because, as he explains, these days the internet serves a similar purpose that a library would have back when Lauriston Castle was built.   While this does run in to technical difficulties, Cook maintains the momentum of his performance to deliver his reveal.  It is perhaps all the more impressive for the unplanned extra suspense.

Cook’s performance brings the magic of the evening to a close, but the audience is lucky enough to have the opportunity to stick around for a quick tour of the remaining rooms of the castle.  This includes two real secret rooms hidden in the performance venues.  As the event begins with a brief re-telling of the story of the castle and ends on this tour, the actual magic shows feel surrounded by history.

Lauriston Castle is an incredible venue for this Secret Room event, and the magic matches the excellence of the architecture.  The assortment of magicians is well chosen, as their contrasting styles ensure that each of their performances feels distinct, and the contrast makes the event feel balanced.  The castle and illusions combined ensure a wonderful evening steeped in all the best history and magic Scotland has to offer.

BILLY REID – STORYTELLER

☆☆☆☆

In Storyteller, Billy Reid structures his performance around stories from his childhood, using magic to illustrate them and bring them to life.  “Illustrate” is perhaps the key word here, as aside from being incredibly well performed, Reid’s magic tricks are more often than not exceptionally aesthetically pleasing.

Reid sets this tone from his first card trick.  He starts it classically enough, with an audience participant picking a card that Reid then shuffles back in to his deck, but when the cards start changing to match the story that Reid tells, the fact that in the end he successfully finds the right card is actually the least exciting part of the act.  The artistic trend continues in Reid’s mentalist tricks, as he reads a volunteer’s mind by painting the scene that she is thinking of on a canvas on stage, his firm and decisive brush strokes keeping the audience engaged in trying to work out the final image.

Like all of this year’s solo shows at MagicFest, Storyteller is performed at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, and one of Reid’s tricks in particular would not look out of place in one of their exhibitions.  Reid uses a blank card deck that he has illustrated himself to tell the story of his love for Scotland in a trick that showcases both his magical and artistic skills.  This is a particularly inventive highlight of Reid’s beautifully creative show.

Reid’s tricks rely on audience participation just as much as any other magician’s, but Reid is notable in that he invites volunteers to step forward before randomly selecting a participant himself.  While both approaches have their merits, Reid’s worked for him in that his volunteers were visibly excited to participate, and the shyer members of his audience were presumably a little bit less stressed.  It is certainly more enjoyable to watch audience participants who participate enthusiastically.

Storyteller is a gorgeous production.  One of the personal details that Reid shares is that as a child he was passionate about his art classes, which is no surprise to his audience after seeing this show.  Reid smoothly combines his illustrative and performance skills into a remarkable experience.

 

More information on Billy Reid and his performance dates can be found here