London shows for the Family

Now you see me Live ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Now you see me film franchise has had three editions so far and we have become familiar with the spectacular illusions and stunts that the Four Horseman use to expose their adversaries on large scale locations around the World. The Live version which has arrived at The Coliseum in London for a short season before heading to Las Vegas promises to bring that experience to the stage. But the title and the four lead magicians as the Horseman are as far as any comparison goes with the films. Instead, what we see live is a very good Magic and Stunt variety show with seven very good stage magicians presenting familiar tricks in a very slick ,brilliantly lit, and impressive show of sleight of hand, escapes, and showmanship with plenty of audience interaction.

The Four Horsemen are Frenchman Enzo Wayne  (now replaced by James More for the second half of the run), Italian Andrew Basso, South African Gabriella Lester, and host Matthew Pomeroy. They are supported by Three Britain got Talent participants, card manipulator Eden Choi, Imagineer Fraser Penman, and Magician Rafferty Coope. Each has their own style and captivates the audiences with their delivery.

Sleight of Hand

This basic magician skill is demonstrated with flair during the show with the help ( even distraction at times) of watching it on a large close-up screen. Eden Choi’s mastery of card manipulation and appearances is incredibly quick and impressive and shows great skill honed with hours of practice. Matthew Pomeroy excels in a close up routine of card manipulation of a card signed by a cute 8-year-old lad selected from the audience as the card repeatedly “rises” to the top of the deck.

Audience Participation tricks

Even though the Coliseum is a very large venue, the audience is deeply involved throughout the show bringing the magic closer to them. They end Act 1 with every member of the audience tearing four playing cards in half and then discarding six random halves to leave a matching pair. It is a simple but effective mathematical trick if you follow the steps but nevertheless it is effective. Rafferty Coope opened the show by getting the audience to shout out three things, in this case Prague, Red Helicopter and £5million as the facts for a planned heist, before revealing his prediction of the same hung above the stage. If you watch carefully, you can see when the switch takes place, but it is a fun opening. Matthew Pomeroy also plays mind games with a Love actually style signs asking the audience to respond to carefully drafted written questions. It is very simple but depends on the majority picking a sport with a vowel for a second letter which so many do!

Technology Tricks

Fraser Penman opened Act 2 with a clever demonstration of imagination in which we all picked an image from the giant screen and following instructions end up with the same object. While Gabriella Lester uses the large screen to present an animated routine that produces money in a case. They concluded the show with what we regard of one of the weakest tricks supposedly using a calculator on a phone but anyone with a simple understanding of maths would see that the calculation does not produce the answer they say which sets up a clever finale. 

Disappearance Illusions

They stage a series of larger illusions in which objects appear, and the magician(s) disappear opening with the aforementioned Red Helicopter appearing behind a screen.

Gabriella Lester magics out of an exploding safe, while Enzo Wayne uses throne to disappears from twice. They combines in trick in a large box with an inserted tube to present an illusion of a girl in a box and then tempted us to pick how it was done from four suggestions : mirror, camera trickery, contortionist, or twin. One can’t help thinking all four methods were used during the show but perhaps not on that trick!

The Stunts

Andrew Basso did the “dangerous and stupid” tricks such as the straight jacket escape,  and another holding a scorpion in his mouth while being slapped on the face be an audience member. But best of all he reimaged the Houdini escape suspended upside down in a tank of water in full view. It took two minutes 28 second of calm work while holding his breath, an impressive feat.

 

The Grand Illusion

All four the horseman combined for their neatest trick which we think combined audience participation, sleight of hand, technology, and disappearance to present a “teleportation” illusion in which they travel back in time with four objects selected from the audience. It is impressively presented and the only trick which really lives up to the expectations driven by the film franchise.

 What makes the show work and so enjoyable is the fabulous precise lighting by Hugo Mercer Bossney and atmospheric musical underscore by Evan Duffy. The best magic and illusion is always a combination of the performer’s skill, banter and distraction,  and the setting created for the trick. The Producers Lionsgate get this right combined with some good camera work from the team to draw us in from the huge auditorium. If you love magic and illusion you will have seen this all before but enjoy their styling and delivery. If you have not, then there is no better introduction to the genre. If want, you really want to see true Stage Magic and Illusion, then Harry Potter and the Cursed Child just up the road at the Palace does a much netter job weaving into a coherent narrative and genuinely leaving you wandering how it was done.

Nick Wayne

Four stars.

Secrets of the Magic Circle and Brian Conley’s Big Night of Magic.⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Magic Circle was founded in 1905 at Pinoli’s restaurant, and its first president was David Devant. It adopted the phrase “Indocilis Privat Loqui” , meaning not to disclose secrets although Devant published them in a book Tricks for everyone and lost his membership for a year in 1910. It was not until 1991 that women were admitted to the Magic Circle! They are now based in Stephenson Way near Euston Station, since 1998, and that is where we went to enjoy the Secrets of the Magic Circle and Brian Conley’s Big Night of Magic. The titles of the two promised a lot including revealing some of those secrets.  This first is  a regular Saturday open doors event, the second was a charity fund raiser for MS in honour of magician Wayne Dobson who dies from the illness a year ago after a very creative and innovative career as a magician.

Secrets of the Magic Circle begins in the ground floor club room where you can relax and have a drink and meet a close-up magician for some card tricks, £5 note changed into £20 and a rubber band trick. It is in our view close up sleight of hand magic is the most impressive, as even if you know the art of distraction and the methodology used, you can’t help but admire the skill and dexterity of the magician in following you. There is a special delight in seeing the younger members of the audiences enthralled by the tricks.

In the basement is the main museum with cabinets of artifacts and poster owned or loaned to the Magic circle. It is a fascinating glimpse into the history . The costume and a few props of Chung Ling Soo, an American, William Ellasworth,  who presented as a china man borrowing an act from a real china man Ching Ling Foo! He never spoke a word in English to the public until his catching the bullet in the mouth trick went wrong when he is said to have uttered, “something happened, lower the curtain” before dying from the bullet through the lung. Also of interest was a cabinet showing some items used by “spiritualists”  of the kind that Harry Houdini sought to debunk in his later life.

The next element are two shows in the club room and the Devant Room on 1^st floor. We saw Marcus Morgan as the eccentric Curator of the Magic Circle explaining some history of the Magic Circle and while producing an endless number of spectacles demonstrated a trick with a never-ending amount of water in it  and the comedy trick with  wooden duck picks a selected card from a pack. This was very much for the children in the front row who seemed amused. Upstairs we saw Michael Vincent who has won Close-Up Magician of the year three times and with a good line in banter he demonstrated some classic tricks to a very high standard. The seven metal rings that magically interlink , the three different lengths of white rope that become equal in length, a torn line of thread that magically rejoins itself and a neat drink where a selected card magically appears between two jokers. He has a mastery of the art and perhaps delivered these tricks the best we have ever seen performed.  As you leave the room there is a chance to look at some displays Tommy Cooper, Paul Daniels and Houdini.

The final element of the afternoon is in the main Theatre which seats around 160 guests. Here we saw Michael Jordan who also performs as High Jinks and recently toured with the Sooty show.  His performance was a variety act with magic weaved in and included the newspaper tear trick,  the dancing handkerchief on a jar, the magical appearance of orange juice from a “random” choose of 20 drinks, a juggling card trick, the spinning glasses of water ( not so much a magic trick as a skill using centrifugal forces) and the pretty snowflakes finale. He delivers it all with bags of energy and confident delivery that works a charm.

The evening show, Brian Conley’s Big Night of Magic was even more a variety show built around Brian Conley’s usual variety act that he includes in pantomime, and The Brat Pack shows. He began by reminding us of what a big TV star he was in the nineties and his friendship with Wayne Dobson. His easy banter and stage presence charms any audience, but it was clear that there was some of his older fan base in to enjoy his show. Conley introduced four magic acts and his daughter lucy who sang two duets with him.

Michael Jordon returned repeating some of the afternoon tricks ( always interesting to see it again so soon after watching and then a comedy routine juggling three knifes while riding a unicycle. Jack Ranger-Walsh, a recent young magician of the year winner, performed a neat trick using the book 1984 where he guessed words on a “randomly” chosen page. He showed real potential in his confident delivery of the act. Sonia Benito performed two tricks. Firstly, predicting an audience selected word from a bag of slips of paper and then apparently having a solid metal chain pulled through her body by two audience members. Neither trick was completely convincing. Paul Dubek did two turns . One a neat shadow puppet show using just his hands to create animals and then another familiar trick wrapped up in some comedy and multiple cases in which an audience members signed £5 note magically appears in a banana. Once again, you simply have to admire the execution and presentation of the trick.

In the event no secrets were spilled in either show and the absence of any big illusions was disappointing ( the zigzag woman, sawing someone in half, or a disappearance would have been good). Yet we don’t see enough magic on TV these days, we used to love Thames TV’s Best of Magic, Paul Daniels Magic show or earlier still The David Nixon show, so there was a touch of nostalgia in seeing the shows and if anything, it left us wanting more on  a grander scale.

 

Nick Wayne

Frozen ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

 On my Sixty Fifth birthday with my wife and two grown up sons, we knew we were not the target audience for the UK premiere of Disney’s Frozen but the chance to see the refurbished Theatre Royal in Drury Lane where we have seen so many spectacular shows over the years from Billy, Chorus Line, 42nd Street, and Sweeney Todd in the last century to Oliver, Shrek, Lord of the Rings and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory this century it seemed an obvious choice to celebrate the milestone. We knew the songs from the movie and the basic story but could see we were surrounded by mothers and daughters dressed as Elsa, who were serious fans. It proved to be a thoroughly entertaining afternoon gloriously set and dressed, with a sprinkling of magical effects to recreate the key moments. 

The challenge of turning an animated film into a stage musical is how to create the magical creatures like Sven, the reindeer and Olaf, the snowman and how to execute the transformations from Arendelle to the frozen landscapes. The fact that the production  garnered What’s On stage awards for best set design, best costume design and best video design confirms that the creative team have delivered on this challenge. Sven is an impressive looking character played by Ashley Birchall and Mikayla Jade in what must be a back breaking and calf aching role and Olaf was comically created by as a puppet handled by Craig Ormson with a slightly bizarre song, “In summer” .

But is the physical design that is most impressive with the excellent false proscenium and grand interiors of the Palace contrasting beautifully with the icy scenes on the bridge and in Elsa’s palace assisted by the excellent video projection including a wonderful representation of the Northern Lights.

 

The scene in Oaken's Trading Post & Sauna adds a touch of comedy with an incongruous Sauna scene in the song, “Hygge” with a naked cast covering themselves with Sauna Whisks. However, the most magical moments when Elsa’s is transformed to the ice maiden and when Anna is frozen into block is very well done and both draw gasps of delight.

The show belongs to Samantha Banks as Elsa who looks and sounds amazing especially in her songs ,”Dangerous to Dream”, and of course “Let it go”. On the afternoon we saw the show Sarah O’Connor played Anna, confidently filling the shoes of Stephanie McKeon with charm and good stage presence and gloriously punching Hans, Oliver Ormson, in the final scene. Obioma Ugoala plays Kristoff and Jak Skelly plays Oaken both providing good support to the grown-up sisters. It is the younger actresses who get to sing the charming “I want to build a snowman” and surely win over the audience.

Michael Grandage proves he is a very safe pair of hands in directing this conversion from screen to stage in creating a show that extends the life of the film characters and introduces the young audience to live theatre.

This may not have the enduring appeal of Disney’s Lion King but it’s a fine entertaining show which attracts a young audience and as the introductory voiceover says will hopefully set them on a path to a lifetime of theatre going just as my first visit to see Michael Crawford in Billy in 1974 has done for me. 

 Nick Wayne

 Four stars

Adrian Mole 

We missed out on Sue Townsend famous book series which was 1st published in 1982 as we were too old to read them as children and our children were Harry Potter era kids so although I know the story, I am not familiar with the original works. It meant I was new to the stage show with no expectations of preconceived ideas of the characters. I found the new musical version of the show a bit of a mess and the energy and effort of the cast could not hide the flaws in the production.

No attempt has been made to update the stories for the thirty seven years that have passed since Adrian was 13 3/4 so the story is full of dated references that must be lost on a new young audience (Thatcher , Lady Diana and British Home Stores) and the appeal of diaries and porn mags to teenage boys has long been replaced by the I phone! Even the attitudes displayed seem outdated as when Bert says " Women are like horses , you need to whip ‘em, slap ‘em and ride’ em" or Pauline being told to "shut your legs " and Adrian 's call for equality at the end feels like an afterthought !

The production has then decided to cast the adults as children to fill out the scenes lead by the 4 principal child actors. This feels odd and makes the show feel like a regional Pantomime doing the old routine in the school room with the usual amount of adult innuendo throughout the show.  When shows like Matilda and Billionaire Boy (at NST Southampton) have so successfully used young actors to portray children it is an odd decision, presumably for economic reasons. Indeed, the show's director, Luke Shepherd directed Billionaire Boy and created a much more coherent, flowing show than the disjointed clumsy staging here.

 The set on arrival in the auditorium looks impressive, a large box set of Adrian's bedroom framed by rulers (for measuring his "thing") but soon proves to be too cumbersome for the multiple scene changes. The cast gamely push different settings on and off through the various cupboards, but each takes time and distracts from action taking place downstage. As the show progresses less is set as if the director has given up trying to create the settings. It simply is too complex to work; again, the Billionaire show did this in a much slicker way.

Of course, this is a musical and the band of seven set high against the back wall bash out the tunes which are largely instantly forgettable and Adrian himself seems to speak the lyrics rather than singing them. Only occasionally do the songs and routines hit a West End standard as in "Look at that Girl" when Pandora arrives at the school. At other times the routines are simply awful as in "Royal Wedding” and "If you'd lived “. 

All these flaws distract from the wonderful effort of the cast who throw themselves into the show with plenty of energy and enjoyment. Amy Ellen Richardson stands out amongst the adult cast as Pauline, Adrian’s Mum for some reason attracted to the obnoxious next-door neighbour rather than her drunken husband …not much of a choice. On the night I saw it, it was Rebecca Nardin as Pandora who stood out amongst the four child parts (a team of 16 perform the roles).

The Ambassadors theatre is a small compact venue and the limited run to 12^th October should find an audience from friends and family alone but this show is not the next Matilda and I would rather have seen a Billionaire Boy transfer in to the West End.

Nick Wayne

Two stars