Month: July 2023

Magic seems to be something just perfect for television, but, of course, magic on stage has been around for a very long time.

Las Vegas seems to be the place to go. There are so many magic shows, including Penn & Teller, David Copperfield, Criss Angel, Piff the Magic Dragon…

In the UK, Derren Brown does shows, more mental trickery than illusions, and sometimes there are shows with a number of younger, up-and-coming stars doing essentialy old fashioned variety.

The Mischief Comedy Group, those jolly folk behind The Play That Goes Wrong, did a Magic Goes Wrong show recently with the help of Penn & Teller, mostly Penn, or so it seemed. When this closed, some of the cast maintained their part of the act for a time.

Of course, on tv, classic magicians like David Nixon and Paul Daniels had long running shows, Penn & Teller have Fool Us, the talent shows often have magicians on doing stuff. So there’s plenty of it about.

The classical view of the magician is someone in a dinner suit with a top hat, someone with some style or class.

They are making this appear or disappear: rabbits, birds, cards, snooker balls, candles whatever. The suit is an especially good place to hide things.

Nowadays, the style has changed. Penn & Teller do appear in suits, but more casual. The trend is for more pop, disco style outfits.

When Robert Harben did the Zig-Zag Woman, he was dressed in a dinner suit.

The Paul Daniels Magic Show ran on UK tv for a long time, something like 15 years, but was cancelled for something more modern. Current magicians seem to be more into dancing, especially disco, as a prelude to a trick:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv44u9V75YE

I once had an idea I thought would make a great book.

To be honest, it was a book I wanted to actually read rather than write. I assumed a book on this topic existed, and did a search in the usual places, but no luck. I thought maybe there would be a PhD thesis on the subject, but all searches were in vain.

To me this meant that perhaps a book had been written and was such a success, or failure, that no copies were available, even second hand. Or maybe no-one had written a book, because they hadn’t thought of it or they had and realised it was not worth the effort. Or maybe my Web searching skills were not what they used to be.

It was on a subject I had always been interested in, vaguely, and wanted to know more about some aspect of it. Maybe it wouldn’t make a complete book, but whatever, it would be interesting to research.

The topic? MAGIC.

To be clear from the start, stage magic or rather stage and tv magic, you know, the kind of stuff Paul Daniels or David Nixon did. Not juggling, escapology, acrobatics, not side show acts like sword swallowing, just plain stage magic, like pulling a rabbit from a hat.

Now, if you are one of those people who thinks ‘Oh my goodness, so boring, waste of time, rubbish…’ then don’t go away. You are absolutely the person I am interested in.

It seems to me there are three groups of people, those who enjoy magic and perform tricks, those who watch it on tv and on stage and clap politely after a trick, and people who find it stupid and whose hearts sink when someone brings out a pack of cards and says they will do a trick.