Go to a Derren Brown show and you’ll find yourself well and truly Mousetrapped. In this case, though, it’s not just the ending everyone’s forbidden to reveal: it’s the beginning as well – and absolutely everything that follows the beginning and comes before the end. This, of course, leaves nothing you can reveal, and it’s all to ensure each audience arrives with no prior knowledge of what will be going on. Audiences will arrive, though, expecting to be thoroughly involved and intriguingly entertained from start to finish – which, for the most part, they will be.
Loosely termed a hypnotist by many people, Derren has been winning awards and thrilling TV and stage audiences for over twenty years with his interactive, thought-provoking, mesmerising mastery of psychological illusion and mind manipulation, mixed with humour and a vibrant drama of stagecraft along the way. Five or six years on from his last UK show and following his Broadway debut, Showman once again presents tricks of the mind that make people question and doubt their own memory of what they believed was reality, which keeps their mental cogs whirring and pondering long after the show is over. Elements of statistical likelihood and probabilities, universality, logic, calculated risk-taking and observations of body language, speech styles and physical and mental attributes all come into play in Derren’s assessments, choices and deductions – and in those of audience members looking on.
Written by Derren Brown together with directors Andy Nyman and Andrew O’Connor, this ostensibly one-man affair keeps the warm, well spoken and (apparently) relaxed Mr Brown, be-suited and shiny-headed, as the constant, charismatic centre of focus, in complete charge throughout. Meanwhile, a team of assistants works hard on and off stage as the stage is repeatedly peopled with volunteer participants, ever eager to be amazed, bewildered or bamboozled in public. Those selected to take part – by a process of elimination – fall mainly into that slim percentage of folk who are more suggestible when it comes to mind direction.
To keep things moving smoothly, personal anecdote, jokes, quips, charming patter, a little mischief, and philosophical views and advice on life pour into the mix, while a dusky charcoal and purple set, bursts of sound and lighting effects, atmospheric use of Sinatra, Mozart and Beethoven, plus an occasional fishy element all serve to enhance the drama of the illusions.
As any teacher knows, the same brilliant lesson plan that works like a magical, well-oiled, clockwork dream with one set of pupils can come adrift and falter in places with another motley set. Likewise, the same show, or any component thereof, no doubt brings different interactions and outcomes with each new audience and set of participants.
Whether you look on wowed and astounded, puzzled and bewildered, or too Sherlock-Holmes rational to be either – or possibly an alternating mixture of all those things and more – this is an intriguing, engaging entertainment that stimulates your powers of reason, questioning and deduction and keeps them stimulated all the way home.
Eileen Caiger Gray
Showman tours on to Stockton, Northampton, London Apollo and Norwich. You can find out more information by following this link.
