As Edinburgh Festival Fringe fever hits the city we have been visiting some of the most exciting and talked about shows to see if they live up to the hype.
An 'adult only' magic show would make anyone curious, the words 'adult only' and 'magic' paired together leave a lot to the imagination but ultimately it sounds like an exciting show full of surprises. So we headed along to the Assembly Studios to see the Adult Only Magic Show and find out exactly what it was all about.
The lecture hall usually filled by University of Edinburgh students was packed with excited grown ups awaiting a show of magic, mind bending tricks and a bit of nudity.
READ MORE: An Edinburgh local’s guide to the Fringe and our top tips for festival season
With thousands of shows on offer at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe there is no guarantee you will enjoy every show you see. Comedy is subjective and everyone has their own personal tastes. For me unimpressive magic tricks paired with childish humour just doesn’t hit the spot.
The first yikes moment was when the gentleman dressed like your typical mysterious magician presenting the show mentioned in his introduction, he would like to see a pair of t*** from a woman in the crowd by the end of the show. I don't even know what to say about that 'punchline' on reflection. Outdated? Objectifying? or just inappropriate. There were plenty of concerned glances swapped between members of the audience.
But the show had barely started so we sat tight, kept an open mind and tried to give it a chance. The mind trick parts of the show, although not overly interesting were all spot on, they managed to guess the word one gentleman was asked to remember, a card another lady was asked to keep in her mind and the same again in another similar trick.
Another poor attempt at humour was when a member of the audience had to come on stage and was asked to think of a three letter word, she had thought of "eat" which we found out after, while they wrote the word "sex" on another card that only the audience could see.
While holding up the word "sex", the comedians continued to ask her questions like how often do you do this, who do you usually do it with and would you do it with us while the crowd erupted into laughter. Maybe I am missing something but I just did not find it funny.
The show is described as a "jam-packed spectacular featuring hilarious, raucous, comedy, mind-bending illusions, stunningly dangerous stunts and just a cheeky hint of nudity!"
The most dangerous stunt I saw was the performers, taking a woman's phone from the audience placing it in a brown paper bag along with four other identical bags and hitting them with a hammer one by one based on her choices. No quite the dangerous stunt I had in mind.
At points I genuinely felt like I was in primary school as one of their main sketches was let's create a dream date for one of the presenters. You know that game you play on a train to pass the time? The create your ideal 'insert event here' then you fill in all the options such as the location, who it would be with, what the activity would be etc to create a random date? Yes this really was part of the show.
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In all fairness most of the audience seemed to be enjoying the show and participating, and for a Thursday night showing in the first week of the Fringe it was pretty much sold out.
The festival is all about seeing different shows, and experiencing new things so I am always up for trying something new. Comedy is subjective and there were definitely plenty of members of the crowd who loved the show but it just wasn't for me.
We managed to sit for about 45 minutes waiting to witness some skilful and impressive magic but as time went on it became clear we wouldn’t be seeing any in this performance so we called it a night.
I would never usually leave a show early just out of respect to the performers but we were sitting in the back and I couldn’t take anymore, so during some applause we snuck out. If the Adult Only Magic Show does sound like your cup of tea you can find out more and book here.
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