Naked Magicians totally exposed

Just the name, The Naked Magicians, holds so much promise — especially for the young women who comprised most of the audience at Kelowna Community Theatre on Tuesday night.

The reality of this 90-minute magic-and-comedy show was much less than promised: no frontal nudity (lots of cheeky behaviour), no innovative magic and juvenile sexual innuendo throughout.

Mike Tyler and Christopher Wayne, two of Australia’s most famous magicians, have had sold-out shows in Australia, Great Britain and Asia, but the 856-seat Kelowna Community Theatre was barely one-third full.

It's not as if the 31-year-old buff bros don’t have the credentials after nearly 20 years of performing magic.

Wayne is the first Australian magician in television history to have his own TV series, More Than Magic, which aired in Australia, New Zealand, England and the U.S.

Meanwhile, Tyler swam competitively at the Australian national championships and Pan Pacific Games before becoming a professional magician for corporate events around the world.

However, their magic is almost an excuse to make ribald jokes throughout and call it the world’s naughtiest and funniest magic show, complete with an inflatable doll and large, blow-up male genitals tossed through the air by the audience.

Wayne summed it up perfectly when he asked how many young women were on “a girls’ night out,” and the response was boisterous screams.

Ultimately, their non-show would have been better in a large millennial nightclub where they could have shown it all.

There’s no doubt both have incredible physiques — exposed for only part of the show — but this was not a high-class presentation to match, thanks to lots of f-bombs, other coarse language and body language, i.e. pelvic thrusting.

It met the definition of bawdy: dealing with sexual matters in a comical way. Even Wayne’s freakishly long tongue became part of their low-brow humour.

In fact, the most entertaining part of the show was the reaction of a continuous stream of female (and one male) volunteers to all of this staged frivolity.

As for the magic, we’ve seen it all before: identifying a selected card from a deck of cards, audience participation in putting the two halves of cards back together, smashing a volunteer’s cell phone, cutting a rope in half and rejoining it, and escaping two straight jackets (one was a ‘gay’ jacket but “a little more fabulous”).

Been there, done that; don’t want to do it again.