Britain’s Got Talent magician headlining Summerfest
He is a star of stage and screen, but not like any you’ve ever seen before.
Matt ‘The Magician’ Johnson has two video clips from Britain’s Got Talent (BGT) that have combined for 25 million views (plus the television audience). He was seen millions more times on Penn & Teller: Fool Us, Wizard Wars, The Lorraine Show, and many other platforms.
But before all that, he was seen by a host of children in Prince George, and he’s coming back for more of our city this weekend. —
—
Johnson is the headliner at this year’s Downtown Summerfest event on Sunday, and he’ll also be appearing in select nightspots where you’ll be up closer to his eye-popping magic tricks than Simon Cowell and Amanda Holden ever were when he gave them veritable heart attacks earlier this year on two rounds of BGT.
His tricks on BGT were deathdefying underwater escapes from locks and chains. He can’t transport such apparatuses to Prince George, even though it’s just a quick trip up from his Chilliwack home. Instead he’ll be doing his drier act, with card tricks, prop tricks, mind tricks, basically anything that’ll get your heart racing and mind spinning.
“I was there in Prince George for two or three weeks,” he said. “I did a tour of the elementary schools.”
It was winter, then. But when it comes to professional illusions and sleight-of-hand, it doesn’t matter what the temperature might be, how old the audience is, what lineage you’re from, what your favourite sport is, or whatever your shoe size.
“It’s universal,” he said. “All ages, demographics, cultures, everyone loves it.”
He’s needed translators in some of the international locales he’s worked his magic (you knew that was coming). Sometimes he lets music fill the sonic spaces instead of his voice. He lets his trademark bald cranium and lush beard catch people’s attention, he lets his tattoos dazzle the curious eye, and then he blows every mind in the show’s blastradius without any regard for ethnicity or social status.
“This is what I know, its where I’m most comfortable. For a lot of people, being on stage is at their scariest, but its where I’m the most comfortable,” said Johnson.
“I’m kind of unique in that a lot of magicians specialize in grand illusion or balloon twisting or whatever. I’ve spent my whole career dabbling in all avenues of my performance art and I incorporate it all into my show. Which I find makes it a lot more universal, and makes it more interesting to watch. I’m like a chameleon.”
He gets to ply his trade in venues just as diverse. He is world famous for his television appearances, but he is a favourite on cruise ships, in theatres, in schools, and up close in bars or on street corners. He has never lost the spark for the face-to-face audience interaction.
A sense of gratitude wafts around everything he does. While some kids had sports stars and heartthrobs pinned up on their bedroom wall, he had posters of Harry Houdini. This was always his life’s fascination and passion.
Johnson is happy to get breathless reactions from the likes of Simon Cowell, but he loves inflicting the same agog shock to a family on the streets of Prince George, and that’s where he’ll be on Sunday, first with the mainstage kickoff show at 11 a.m., then around the Summerfest grounds as the day of festivities unfolds.