Stage mentalism – the world of Derren Brown and David Blaine, with its puffed-up mystique and pretence to danger – is there for the mickey-taking. Its best proponents, like Brown himself, openly acknowledge as much. While we await the satirical take that burrows close to the artform’s bone, there’s plenty to enjoy in this distant-from-the-bone send-up from Mischief Theatre. A spin-off from the company’s West End show Magic Goes Wrong, Mind Mangler finds our deep-voiced, shallow-talent host – he’s basso, but not so profundo – botching mind-reading tricks while his life collapses around him.
“Collapsing around him” is quite the Mischief trademark, and there are flashes of the company’s knockabout slapstick here, as the Mangler trips up the stairs and the wrong objects bend when he rubs a spoon. It’s a good gag, that one, and there are more, as our host (played by Henry Lewis) fails to mind-read our names, struggles to heal a woman’s eyesight with his hypnotic skills – and strives to rebrand those failures as successes using melodramatic commentary alone.
