Magical, mystical tour of illusions
The Illusionists (Shaftesbury Theatre, London) Verdict: Exactly what it seems ★★★★✩ THERE is no trick to it: The Illusionists is a show in which illusionists perform illusions.
And since there has never been a time when people weren’t interested in seeing if a man in handcuffs could escape from a box of sand before suffocating, hey, presto: we’ve got ourselves a night out.
Indeed, we’ve got ourselves a box-office juggernaut, rolling from Broadway to Sydney, and now crashing back into London in a fug of dry ice. Jonathan Goodwin, a Britain’s Got Talent alumnus, climbs, handcuffed, into that box of sand. Yu Ho-Jin conjures up entire decks of cards from thin air and squeezes the hearts off them. And James More snaps himself at the hips with a nasty clunk and stands before us with vertical legs and a horizontal torso — the most startling lurch to the right this reviewer has seen outside Trump’s White House.
It’s a bold mix of hunks and nerds, and the theatre hoarding looks like the poster for a remake of The Inbetweeners movie partly starring WWF wrestling stars. No women, but we do get Sarah the assistant, who wears studded leather, climbs into a trunk and disappears — more or less the fate of women in magic for ever.
France’s Enzo Weyne goes out of his way to delight by forcing himself through a sheet of steel. But the prize goes to American Adam Trent, whose body-switch moment is so gobsmacking the audience bubbles with astonishment into the next act.
The hyperventilating Chris Cox reads minds in the style of Alan Carr after a bucket of Haribo. And Britain’s Paul Dabek carries the flag for traditional crafts (shadow hand-puppetry and cringe-worthy jokes). But here, for the most part, is highend Las Vegas trickery, with pumping synths, jutting jaws and life-threatening solemnity.
You’ll ask yourself: How do they cram so much cheese into one show without the theatre being declared a dairy? Illusions we are promised, though, and illusions we get.