It may upset The Magician's Circle, but Rupert Uzzell was happy to discover the secrets behind Barry and Stuart's awesome tricks.
Following on from their recent TV exposure on BBC’s ‘The Magicians’, Barry and Stuart have no trouble drawing a large crowd for their ‘Show and Tell: The Show’. An eager audience awaits, and upon receiving a rather intriguing pair of cardboard glasses with red-film lenses it’s clear that this is not going to be a run-of-the-mill magic show.
This proves to be true as Barry and Stuart take the audience through a diverse selection of inventive tricks which carriy their signature style of being rather macabre. Acid, guns and a bed of rusty nails are part of their repertoire this evening and the rose-tinted specs are used at various moments to great effect, usually in combination with film on a big screen at the back of the stage.
Very rarely do they deviate away from their script, which can make their banter rather stilted. However, they appear to be aware of this, and throw in deliberately corny gags in an affectionate parody of the standard cheesy magician that we have come to expect.
This year, it couldn’t be more clear that they want to distance themselves from other conjurors, as for their second show ‘The Tell’, they promise to break that all important rule and expose the secrets behind their act. Audiences should often be wary of this as the secrets behind tricks can be rather dull – trapdoors and hidden compartments aren’t very entertaining in themselves.
Thankfully though, the revelations of the tricks in this show are about as entertaining as being baffled by them in the first place. They demonstrate an ingenious use of technology, chemicals and everyday objects to create these illusions, and the audience leaves with a pleasant admiration of just how innovative and imaginative the workings of illusions can be.
The audience are clearly captivated by both the show and the revelations in ‘the tell’. I can't decide which was more entertaining, but there’s no question that Barry and Stuart have produced the best magic show I've seen at this year's Fringe.
Barry and Stuart: The Show and The Tell is at the Underbelly at 22:15 until the 28th August
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