Theatre / Reviews
Review: Mayfest: This is Not a Magic Show
Anyone who goes to see this show on the basis of its title will be sorely disappointed. Because This is Not a Magic Show is… a magic show, pure and simple.
Admittedly, Vincent Gambini tries to put a little more of a highbrow spin on it. This is Mayfest, after all, not a corporate event or a 50th birthday party. So his dialogue amidst the close-up tricks appears to deconstruct the theatre of the magician, to reveal the soul beneath the top hat.
But that, too, is simply sleight of hand: this is not a confessional, you will not come away having seen deeper into the inner workings of the conjurer’s mind or enlightened on the alchemy between performer and onlooker that makes us see what he wants us to see. Gambini’s narrative might be entertaining, amusing and engagingly deadpan, forgoing the high drama of the classical hocus-pocus magician, but it’s still just stage patter. No secrets are revealed: Gambini’s Magic Circle membership is safe.
Yet that does not detract in any way from the wonder of this show. Card tricks – Gambini’s stock-in-trade – are apparently not highly thought of in the magical community, but for the innocent layman they are nonetheless awe-inspiring. Having promised to “start with the mildly impossible”, the soft-spoken Gambini manages to astonish his audience by erasing playing cards, multiplying coins out of thin air and dealing cards randomly shuffled in perfect sequence.
It’s probably all child’s play to the cognoscenti, but for those not privy to the secrets of the craft there is still the sneaking suspicion that the only way he can do it is by having pledged his immortal soul to Beelzebub. Like all good magic shows, This is Not a Magic Show is baffling, slightly scary – and likely to leave you filled with a child-like wonder at having watched the unfeasible made real.
This is Not a Magic Show was performed at various venues as part of Mayfest 2016, which finishes on Sunday, May 22. For more info, visit www.mayfestbristol.co.uk/mayfest2016/
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