As if a career confounding audiences in-person weren’t enough, now Derren Brown seeks to do so without leaving his own front room. His new show, created with a cast of non-magicians, explores what magic might look like if performed by entertainers with other skills – and without the “learned behaviours and questionable instincts” of the lifelong conjuror. In practice, it feels like yet another piece of oneupmanship by Brown. Whereas once I could blame my failure to fathom his tricks on Brown’s years honing his expert craft, here no such excuse is available.
I’m not sure the show is the bold leap forward for magic that its creators – Brown’s longtime collaborators Andrew O’Connor and Andy Nyman, and Colchester’s Mercury theatre – would have us believe. Yes, it’s a novelty to see trickery combined with song and dance, in a Prohibition-era set-piece about turning water into booze; or with musical ability, in a showstopping routine that sees Hannah Price divine the songs in audience members’ heads, then play them on the piano. The cup-and-ball routine is given a fun spin by being performed en masse, in sync and to a percussive beat by the seven-strong company.
