Brighton Fringe 2025
The Mind Reader Live
Daniel Sinclair
Genre: Magic and Mentalism
Venue: The Joker
Festival: Brighton Fringe
Low Down
A hair -aising performance using a combination of psychology and mentalist tricks
Review
This performance is a blend of psychological studies and mentalist tricks which allegedly enable the performer to read peoples minds.
The show is fronted by Daniel Sinclair, who has performed this up and down the country including in Edinburgh and holiday parks.
Although Sinclair doesn’t always appear to be as confident as one would expect, and at times it was tricky to decipher if an act had “gone wrong” or was a humorous exchange, he has a very amenable stage presence. He equally has a way of putting the audience at ease – which is vital for audience participation- and building a rapport with the people from the audience he chose to participate seemed to come naturally to him. In addition, his choice of outfit (suit) added a “professional” vibe to the experience.
Sinclair has performed this to a wide number of audience members – and that shows. However, the venue for this performance was a small pub. This meant that the sound generated both from the speakers and the microphone were quite loud and bordering on uncomfortable.
There were also times when the performance lost momentum due to a pacing issue – the performance needs to keep the momentum going intentionally and more consistently. In addition, the performance needs some fine tuning – longer explanations on how to do what he’s asking audience members to do and perhaps longer to build up the suspense. Equally I would consider altering the order in which he does the acts – so the performance ends on a high.
However, skills/tricks that he does are generally highly effective. There were multiple times I was left wondering “How does he do that?” Equally he takes a brave risk in asking so many audience members to participate, but it pays off because it adds a sense of inclusion – we all felt involved. Equally it added a sense of suspense – who was he going to ask next?One of the tricks – I won’t spoil it but it involves two audience members doing something they may never have done before was particularly exciting and enticed the audience to want more.
This was a very engaging performance, which was undertaken by somebody who clearly had experience within the performing industry, it just needed some fine tuning to make it more effective.
