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Durham Fringe Festival 2024

Brooklyn Magician

Brooklyn-Ellis Carr

Genre: Magic and Mentalism

Venue: The City Theatre, Durham

Festival:


Low Down

Join teenage magic sensation Brooklyn-Ellis Carr for an unforgettable show, suitable for all ages. See the impossible become possible and experience real mystery. Throughout the show you will witness mind blowing tricks including objects vanishing and appearing in miraculous locations and major predictions being revealed. Funny, skilled with magic at its heart, this young perfomer holds the space and thrills the whole family.

Review

Brooklyn-Ellis Carr is a very good magician, particularly when he whips out a pack of cards. With friendly, fast-paced and witty banter, there is plenty of audience intraction and involvement in this thoroughly enjoyable and impressive magic show. Family-friendly, there were all ages represented in an audience that was more than happy to be involved and gasp at another well delivered trick.

This is classic magic with a few modern twists. Traditional card tricks are delivered with cheeky humour, a few deeper thoughts about human connection as the underkying definition of magic, but you might just find a mobile phone being produced by our host and a trick with numbers that had the audience whooping with wonder. This young magician is fully in command of his audience yet there is nothing arrogant here; it is all done in a very accessible and personable way. This puts the younger ones at easy, ready to put their hands up and say “Pick me!” to get involved in a trick.

It is a well crafted show, the set ups are properly explained, which is important when there are younger children in the audience and there is plenty of direct contact and banter between our host and the audience. There was a sense of inclusion as people from all parts of the venue, even the back row, were invited to step up and help out with a trick.

Some of the card tricks were a little too similar and the “pick a card” elements of several card tricks need a bit more variety as the repertoire evolves. Perhaps one or two tricks need to be larger in bigger venues as close up magic can get lost a bit towards the back row. The City Theatre was the perfect size for this show. Sleight of hand was effected with ease.

The huge strength here is that our magicial held interest and fascination throughout, got us laughing without losing our interest in the magic itself. Getting that balance right, between comedy and the  actual seriousness of magic tricks is key to a well modulated piece fo entertainment and that is more than achieved here.

Some narrative around the concept of time was intriguing and elements of the show felt like valuable edutainment. Magic here is treated as the craft it is and I am sure magicians of a much older age will thumbs up this seventeen year-old. Overall the variety and the pace of the show ensure that entertainment levels are high and consistent throughout. Just add a bit more variety around the card tricks.

The audience loved it and the rousing ovation at the end was well deserved. I have seen magicians twice his age at the Edinburgh Fringe lose the audience to bemusement and boredom. Not so here. There is comedy, a little endearing ranconteur storytelling, plenty of well selected and skilfully done magic. What more can anyone ask for?

 

Published