I’m curious about the audience for this show, taking place at BATS Random theatre. Some of the adults are accompanied by children, but not that many.  

In the foyer, I ask a few what the attraction is. “Something a bit different,” says a thespian friend. “Won the tickets,” grins another. In the queue to go in, the guy in front of me is arguing with the usher about which bit of the ticket he gets to keep. “I collect them,” he grumbles.

Our MC, James, is adept enough not to have to perform magic to get the crowd on board. We learn there’s an 8-year-old amongst us, and a 6-year-old. And a 4-year-old. Oh, and an 80-year-old. There’s a line-up of magicians to look forward to – they’re all members of the Wellington Magic Club, or should that be cabal?

Our first engages us in a discussion of believers versus non-believers where magic is concerned, and the real versus the not real. It’s good to know that a dash of philosophy leavens a magician’s mind. And mind is indeed the matter here – he is a mentalist, as his act demonstrates.

The performers who follow provide us with a raft of magic tricks which leave us bemused as well as entertained. All of them are male – so it’s a relief when a young woman is asked onstage to participate in an exercise which is meant to demonstrate the place of lying in poker. Luckily, she makes all the correct responses.

Most memorable perhaps is the lesson we get in te reo – involving a $50 bet and some audience participation of a most surprising kind. 

The final act is a tad protracted and draws impatient interjections from an unruly audience member. Some of us wish that the knife employed by the magician to select cards could be put to more appropriate use.

When the show ends, the woman next to me, who had to get a replacement ticket because she’d lost her original one, retrieves from her bag her mobile phone – and there’s the original ticket stuck to it.

Now that’s magic. 

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