Leeds Grand Theatre – until 4 September 2021
5*****
Mischief most certainly is managed with their brand new show Magic Goes Wrong. A charity fundraiser, in desperate need of help.
Created by masters of magic Penn and Teller and the Mischief trio of Henry Lewis, Henry Shields and Jonathan Sayer this is a show full of thrills and spills. With lots of comedy and some real, actual magic.
The set by Will Bowen is excellent, with little finishing touches that add to the mirth. The light up letters revealing Disasters In Magic Charity Fundraiser, fade out in different forms to reveal different words – “Tragic” “Arse” and “Chunder” are among them.
As always with Mischief the entertainment starts while people are still taking their seats, we are looking for doves, with one poor woman having her head caught in a net as her hair was mistaken for the birds. An escapee rabbit entertains and the tech crew hoover up the stage before the evening entertainment actually begins.
Sophisticato (Sam Hill) is joined on stage by German wonder magicians (and his more successful sisters) Bar (Ishbel Cumming,filling in for Chloe Tannenbaum) and Spitzmaus (Jocelyn Prah), the Mind Mangler (David Nellist) and The Blade (Keifer Moriarty), who is the brother of the tennis coach of the accountant of David Blaine. With the help of the glamorous Eugenia (Valerie Cutko), before her sad demise at the end of part one.
The show is slow paced in some areas and plain daft in others but that just adds to the joy of the production. I enjoyed the Mind Mangler, his deft defying glass bottle trick was truly breathtaking and his mixed up prompts were hilarious. His quick improvising with the crowd was fun too.
Its mad cap, silly and magical and Derren Brown even made a quick cameo appearance (so did Gwyneth Paltrow but we’ll not dwell on that).
Magic Goes Wrong is in Leeds till Saturday and on tour around the UK. Grab a ticket before they all magically disappear