Edinburgh Fringe 2019
Pete Heat: Massive Wizard
Genre: Magic and Mentalism
Venue: Gilded Balloon
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
“This is the man who taught Dumbledore magic. When Pete isn’t teaching Jude Law magic for Fantastic Beasts or starring in his own show on Sky, he likes kicking back with a biscuit, forcing a beard out of his chin follicles, turning his dope wizard hat backwards and writing a show about the day-to-day life of a magical bozo. This is that show.”
Review
Pete Heat really is a Massive wizard, tall and gangly he wouldn’t look out of place next to Gandalf. He can move through time he tells us, and he is actually from the future and knows everything that is going to happen in the show. This is a one man Magic and Mentalism show, using a range of magic tricks and illusions and comedy to puzzle and entertain his audience.
There is a definite rock and roll feel to this Wizard. He doesn’t have the pomp and grandeur of other Magic shows. No super smart suit or slick one eyebrow raised with smarmy smile. No music effects or unnecessary build up. And he is quite “shambly”, amiable and slow when he is working up to a trick. He plays with us a bit, we aren’t sure if he is going to succeed. We feel like a mate is showing us some stuff in a pub on a drunken Friday night and we aren’t convinced at first. Which makes it even more of a delight when he does pull it off. The audience around me gasped quite a few times, shook their heads and murmured to each other “How did he DO that?”
The show starts with a simple message on the screen on stage, “Write a question about the future, and write it down, fold the paper and put it in the box”. This of course circles to the end and is used one of the final illusions, the audience were impressed. Heat uses a mixture of magic tricks, mentalist, humour and pre-recorded video clips to create an enjoyable show. I won’t tell you any more as I don’t want to spoil it.
My 15 year old son was left wanting more, he enjoyed it very much and as a keen Magic show fan, he shared some thoughts about it. He told me he liked Pete Heat’s ‘attitude’ towards the shows, he loved the start of the show with the phone. He really liked that it was done differently to the many other Magic Shows he has seen (and he has seen a LOT in Edinburgh over many years). He found Pete Heat funny and cool (that’s HUGE praise from a 15 year old teenager). He really liked the magic tricks, some of which he had seen before but he still really enjoyed watching them in this show and still couldn’t work out how they were done, mostly. And his only complaint was that he would have liked to see more tricks.
I genuinely couldn’t work out how he did the tricks he did – I had some ideas but couldn’t be sure. And actually even if you knew how he did them, they were still performed skilfully and so smoothly it was a joy to watch. I left the venue curious and smiling. This wizard has massive talent.
This is a very good, well formed Edinburgh premiere, my son and I are looking forward to seeing what Pete Heat: Massive Wizard, comes back next year with.