Pete Firman is tapping a 4in nail into his nose with a hammer. A few moments
later he is swallowing a maggot. And if that makes him sound like the sort
of performer who puts on whiteface, harasses pedestrians and generally makes
the Edinburgh Fringe feel like a compulsory trip to the circus, think again.
Firman is a magician. He is light entertainment to the bone. He performs in
a three-piece suit and plies the gabby patter of a northern comic. But
Firman knows that magic has to stay surprising to survive.
He is not alone. It's a big year for magic on the Fringe. This year a dozen
acts at the major venues alone are trying to show that this stuff is too
interesting to relegate to weddings, cruise ships and kids' parties; trying
to show that Derren Brown isn't the only man - and, sorry, it is just men
we're talking about here - who can trick us into feeling good about being
fooled.
“Why do we care if the magician is pulling handkerchiefs out of a box?” asks
Firman. Offstage now, he is dressed in a tasselled leather jacket and cowboy
hat that make him look more like a regular 28-year-old from Middlesbrough
than his onstage mix of indie band frontman and Seventies quiz show host.
“When a bloke's got a maggot in his mouth, swallows it, and it comes out of
his eye, you can't watch it passively. There are only a few main ideas at
play. It's how to present them.”
If magic is fighting its way back centre-stage, we have two men to thank or to
blame for that. One is David Blaine, the blank-eyed American illusionist who
rose to fame in the mid-Nineties, while many Fringe magicians were still at
school. “He opened the gates,” says Firman, “after Paul Daniels had locked
them.” The other is Brown, the “psychological illusionist” who's about to
make his sixth series for Channel 4. His influence can be seen most
explicitly on other “mind magicians” or “mentalists” - the proper term,
albeit one co-opted as a teenage insult - such as Philip Escoffey and Chris
Cox. But his credibility casts a shadow on everyone in British magic. It's
mentalism's claims to illuminate concealed psychological truths that gives
it purchase to audiences who'd happily go to their grave without seeing
another glamorous assistant sawn in half.
Escoffey, 37, is a mentalist known to his corporate clients as the Grey Man. A
close friend of Brown's - magicians, like the priests in Father Ted, all
seem to know each other - he admits that Brown has opened up options for the
rest of them. His show, Six Impossible Things Before Dinner, fools us with
impossible feats of mindreading while hinting that the explanation is a
logical one. “If done well,” he says, “you can get rational people thinking,
‘Maybe there's something real going on there.' There's more to hang on to.”
Chris Cox, a 24-year-old mentalist who signed to a big comedy agency after
appearing at last year's Fringe, suggests that his act is 50 per cent
conjuring, 50 per cent psychological techniques. Escoffey isn't sure of the
wisdom of this. “I think you probably want to use 100 per cent conjuring,”
he suggests. Some mentalists claim to use neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)
to plant ideas in our unconscious through the artful manipulation of
language. NLP, says Escoffey, “is just New Age horseshit: Nothing Like
Psychology.” Could it be that mentalism's scientific credentials are merely
decorative?
In Steve Martin's autobiography Born Standing Up, the former boy magician
quotes a key 1943 text by themagician Dariel Fitzkee that derides magic as
“old-fashioned”. People have been saying the same ever since. Fitzkee also
suggested there were only 19 types of magic trick, including “production” -
making something appear from nowhere - and “restoration” - such as tearing
up a volunteer's fiver and then making it whole again. Oh and “thought
reading” - mentalism. Learning tricks is hard. But learning ways to make
those tricks feel fresh is how you make your mark.
Cox found out the hard way that there is no short-cut to doing that. When he
was 18, he interviewed Derren Brown for a student newspaper in Bristol. They
got on well, and later Brown offered him a job as his assistant tour
manager. Cox opted to stay at university. Then he put on his first show at a
tiny Bristol theatre, for which he “borrowed” a couple of Brown's tricks. A
magician was in the audience, and told Brown what had happened.
Cox got an e-mail from Brown. “It taught me the word ‘galling',” he says. “I
had to go and look it up in the dictionary. I felt so embarrassed and
ashamed.” He sent apologetic e-mails, but the two haven't met since. And
when Brown visited his workplace one day - Cox's day job is working for
Radio 1 - he hid until Brown had left the building. “I went through a stage
when I wouldn't watch any of his stuff so I couldn't be influenced by it,”
says Cox. “The only good thing about it is that it's made me find my own
persona.”
Cox does his shows in T-shirt and jeans: he's a bit gawky, an enthusiast who
doesn't mind the odd balls-up. “There is a failure rate,” he admits. “If I
can pull it off 80 per cent of the time I'm happy.” If Cox gets away with
that, it's because his naivety is part of his onstage persona - what
magicians call their “premise”. Firman's premise is more lewd and ironic.
“When you start taking yourself too seriously you're dead with a British
audience,” he says.
The New York magician Eric Walton, who looks like Lex Luthor and dresses like
a camp stockbroker, lends an intellectualism to his mix of mentalism and
card magic in his show Esoterica. Nineteen tricks? Walton would be surprised
if there were ten: “That's why the magician's character is so important.” A
37-year-old actor, he discovered the art eight years ago: “So I have to
practise a lot to catch up with people who have been doing this since they
were 4.” His sleight of hand is superb - some tricks, he says, take years to
perfect - but his emphasis on the workings of the mind is what makes him
modern. He quotes Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, the father of modern conjuring:
“The magician is an actor playing the part of the magician.”
The Fringe hasn't had this much magic for years. But is it a resurgence or a
blip? Jack Delvin, the public relations officer of the Magic Circle, has
been watching and performing magic since the last days of music-hall. Its
popularity, he says, goes in cycles. Blaine brought it up to date a decade
ago: “Everything he did is stuff that the rest of us can do, but he made it
look cool.” Brown has further altered perceptions: but, again, it's the way
he tells 'em. “If you have somebody select a card and you make it disappear
from a pack and then reappear,” says Delvin, “that's magic. But if someone
pulls a card and you ‘read their mind' to tell them what it is, that's mind
magic.”
Harry Potter has had an impact too: “Kids want to see ‘real' magicians at
their parties, not ‘silly sausage' magicians.” But magic needs a primetime
Saturday night act to be big again. “When Paul [Daniels] was on, magic was
doing phenomenally well. Back then I did 300 or 400 shows a year. Now I do
fewer than 200. Because it's not on television like it was.”
Of the Fringe acts, Pete Firman looks like the one who just might become a
popular entertainer. There are sharper comics, there are bolder magicians,
but there are few who so comfortably combine the two. He would love, he
says, to have his own “shiny-floor” television magic series. But Brown
remains the man to beat: “He is the best magician in the world right now.”
And Brown's best trick may be the way he's got the nation to think he's not
even a magician. “The thing about Derren is
you're never quite sure if it's real,” he says. “And magic needs that sort of
needle in the arm; you have to make people think, ‘Is he really doing that?'
But ultimately, he's here for entertainment. That's what we do.” He
chuckles. “It's all bullshit.”
Pete Firman: Flimflam
Mainstream magic given a jocular makeover. Firman uses charm, maggots and a
Phil Collins finale.
Underbelly (0844 5458252)
Barry and Stuart: Part-time Warlocks
From the Scottish double act who brought us The Magic of Jesus on Channel 4,
an inventive hour that includes fire-eating and turning water into wine.
Underbelly (0844 5458252)
Ali Cook: A Touch of Vegas
Combines blokishness with traditional tricks such as making a woman appear in
a box - and a rabbit appear in a hat.
Gilded Balloon (0131-668 1633)
Esoterica
Eric Walton's Off-Broadway hit is a masterclass in card magic and mentalism,
served up with an arch intellectualism that doesn't take itself too
seriously. A poem about Houdini goes on a bit, but otherwise, an absolute
pleasure.
Underbelly Baby Belly (0844 5458252)
Jerry Sadowitz
Hostile, paranoid, foul-mouthed - and a total genius. Sadowitz returns with a
show combining his interests in close-up magic and offensive comedy.
Unmissable.
Udderbelly (0844 5458252)
Chris Cox: Control Freak
His hit rate, on the night I saw him, was a bit erratic. But this boyish
mentalist has a stunning DVD finale that has other magicians scratching
their heads.
Pleasance Courtyard (0131-556 6550)
Philip Escoffey: Six Impossible Things Before Dinner
This skilful mentalist warns us of the dangers of believing in psychics and
other bogus mind-wranglers - while also leaving our minds well and truly
wrangled.
Pleasance Dome (0131-556 6550)
