It’s as if the weather has joined in to help create the perfect atmosphere for the show this evening as, on a torrentially wet and very windy Saturday evening in Tunbridge Wells, we are all here to witness the opening night of the Champions of Magic UK Tour.
Technical issues prevent the show from starting on time but, once again, this simply helps to ramp up the atmosphere and the sense of tension in the audience but, once the show is underway, we soon see that the intricate nature of the tricks being performed, must require a huge amount of preparation and so the short wait is soon forgiven.
Opening the show is classic conjurer Edward Hilsum (pictured above). Although now in his mid-twenties, I am sure that his boyish looks have him reaching for his ID in most pubs! His act offers a contemporary twist to the “traditional” magician’s act with handkerchiefs, candles and doves appearing at every opportunity and then disappearing again in the most baffling of ways.
Using a TV camera to help the huge audience see what is happening on stage, his sleight of hand trick “Silver” is nothing short of mesmerising and for us in the audience, and the one lady lucky enough to be sitting on stage right next to the action, a superb highlight of his act.
A few weeks before the tour started I was lucky enough to interview the second performer, mind-reader Alex McAleer. He completely stunned me then, but to see his full act in the grand setting of a thousand seat theatre, was, quite simply, mind blowing.
Whether his “victims” are with him on stage or half way back in the auditorium, his ability to “read” them is quite phenomenal and is so brilliant that, no matter what words I can think of to describe it, nothing I can say will prepare you for his stunningly scary powers. I am sure I am not the only one still asking myself, how does he do that?
I first witnessed Fay Presto’s close-up magic skills more years ago than either of us would care to accurately count (I am talking in excess of thirty here) and, like the very finest of wines, what started as near perfection has somehow improved even further with age.
She is, without doubt, one of the finest exponents of close-up table magic and her relaxed style, comic one-liners, consumate skill and endearing personality have, over the years, turned her into what many of the young children in the audience would easily regard as the coolest “Nan” that any of them could wish for.
The final performers on the bill are Grand Illusionists, Young and Strange. They perform the “big box” tricks for which they use a number of… you guessed it, big boxes. Each is used for a different and, as the act goes on, more impressive illusion, culmination in the biggest box of all – which contains a full sized metal industrial fan – just the sort of thing that you want to walk through in front of a, stunned into silence, family audience.
There is no doubt that magic holds a very special place in the world of entertainment. It’s performers, like the late, great, Paul Daniels earn a very special place in our hearts because, although we know that what we are seeing cannot possibly be happening, somehow it is.
The tour is now working it’s way around the country and I urge you to quickly get whatever tickets are still available because Champions of Magic is a show that has to be seen to be disbelieved!
***** Five Stars