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.
But it’s not a complete departure, not least because Brown’s offerings are always highly theatrical, and he’s no mean actor himself. He also has a relationship with his audience (whereas Unbelievable’s cast stay largely anonymous and undifferentiated) and a flair for upping the dramatic ante – whereas the emotional climax to tonight’s show doesn’t really fly. And yet, this remains recognisably Brown’s event, from the moment MC Simon Lipkin starts peddling diversionary psychobabble about how we’re all performing magic tricks, every moment of our lives.
That may be so, but mine aren’t as impressive as when Price conjoins three wedding rings from the crowd, or Samuel Creasey – or an astral projection thereof – counts the coins in an audience member’s pocket. If these aren’t the radical departure we’ve been promised, they’re still – for all that the cast learned them yesterday – pleasingly puzzling. Brown’s novel adventure in magic-by-proxy offers plenty to enjoy, then, even if it’s never quite as astounding as when he performs the tricks himself.
• At the Criterion theatre, London, until 7 April 2024
