Definitely nothing up their sleeves
Boys from Brisbane aim to make audience’s inhibitions disappear with R-rated performances
Not long ago a man got up and walked out of The Naked Magicians show.
“He gave us the finger and didn’t even look back. Just walked out,” says Mike Tyler, who along with Christopher Wayne make up the aforementioned The Naked Magicians.
“I don’t know if he walked into the wrong show or someone bought him a ticket as a prank, but he walked out after just a few minutes. It was when we brought out the big inflatable (penis) to throw around the audience.”
Ahhh, obviously not a big inflated penis fan.
The reason we point this out is to make it clear this is not your regular pick-a-card kind of magic show. When The Naked Magicians take to the Hard Rock Casino in Coquitlam on April 7, there will be an inflatable penis and actual naked magicians. This is R-rated fare.
“I’m naked right now talking to you,” Tyler said during a recent phone interview.
In a kind of strip poker sort of way, the magicians remove an article of clothing with each trick. The tricks, by the way, all involve audience participation.
It’s that civilian wild card that Tyler says keeps the show from becoming Groundhog Day for the two performers.
The Naked Magicians became a thing about eight years ago when they were both working magicians in Australia.
“I’d hear, ‘Hey, you’re Magic Mike, can you make my clothes disappear,’ that kind of stuff,” says Tyler, recounting interactions while he was a regular clothes-wearing magician.
After meeting, the pair decided to combine forces and spent a year crafting an act that’s part magic, part comedy and lots of beefcake.
“No one wants to see a couple of tubby magicians get on stage and take their clothes off,” says Tyler. “There’s good getting naked and bad getting naked. We always like to make sure we make time for exercise. We want to make sure we give our audience something good to look at.”
While getting the gear off is a gimmick that keeps on giving, Tyler says that magic — not muscles — remains the show’s foundation.
“We were magicians to start with and magic is our first love. We are at heart a couple of magic geeks,” says Tyler, a former competitive swimmer. “We are not strippers that learned a couple of card tricks. We were full-time successful magicians back home in Australia. We wanted to take magic to a different place and attract a different audience.”
That audience, it turns out, is mostly women out for a night of partying and letting their guard down.
“We noticed everyone has a naughty side to them. Some people keep it bottled up tighter than others and we like to take that bottle of naughtiness and shake it up and open it up,” says Tyler, who along with Wayne hails from Brisbane. “Tricks are themed around naughty topics you might talk about with your friends behind closed doors you know after some wine.”
Both performers may be only 32 years old now, but Tyler says they are well aware of their shelf life.
“I don’t think anyone is going to pay to see us get naked as 40 year olds. Not that there is anything wrong with being 40. Just to do this show, I think we only have a few years left in us as performers,” says Tyler. “But I think the show has more longevity than us so I think we would hand over the reins to young strapping Aussies to learn the show and perform it on our behalf.”
But for now the boys from Brisbane are happily baffling audiences in their birthday suits.