Brighton Year-Round 2025
1955 – A Mafia-themed Magic Show
Bax
Genre: Magic, Magic and Mentalism, Solo Performance, Solo Show
Venue: Sweet Venues and Yellow Book Bar
Festival: Brighton Year-Round
Low Down
“The year is 1955, and your presence is requested. A seat at the table with one of the most notorious deception artists to live. Bax will be working his last job for the Gambino family, smoking out a rat. The evening will involve you witnessing some of the most visual, psychological, and deceptive magic you will ever see. By the end of the night Bax will find the rat, the good for nothing who betrayed the Gambino family and you will all leave questioning what you witnessed with your own eyes.” A short, impressively hosted and delivered magic show.
Review
Magic is the core and heart of this show with a loose narrative set around it, and we are taken into the shadowy realm of the mafiosi.
Leather jacket, confident air and banter, Bax is our host for what turns out to be a 30-minute card and coin magic show with a few other tricks up his sleeve, leaving the audience wanting more in the intimate space run by Sweet Venues. We are, of course, talking upstairs at the Yellow Book.
Sleight of hand, everybody wowing and gasping, these dark arts of deception, and a masterclass in how to avoid the Gambino family.
Our magician also claims to be a back-alley storyteller, and one of us in the audience cannot be trusted, and our steely gazed host will find out by the end.
Reviewing magic shows is almost impossible because the reviewer should not give away any spoilers, and I am not going to do so either. All I can say is you do need to sit in the front row to see all of it clearly because this is table magic a lot of the time. Comedy magician Jerry Sadowitz has the budget for an overhead camera and screen for close-ups of what is going on, but we were more happy to lean in because this welcoming host was also very amiable and friendly. That struck a good balance between the crime world backdrop and just some damn good magic tricks. All tricks were well set up and the audience involvement was slick, supportive, rooted in humour that respected those volunteers and allowed the natural laughter of skilled interaction and sponaneity to emerge.
Some of the card magic routines felt a little bit repetitive, and I would suggest some more variety in this part of the show.
But those regular gasps and wow moments, the easy and witty banter, and the audience involvement made for an entertaining show that could have been a bit longer.
With this type of magic show you are up close and personal, making the tricks spectacular even in such a small venue. Indeed, table magic often becomes big scale even in tiny venues because of the shock of being witness to such cleverness, almost believing it might be magic.
Endearing humour warms the show here and there, and I would have liked to have seen a bit more exploration of the darker backdrop.
Deft magic is the signature of our host, and we were never in any doubt that he was a master of his craft.
Poised audience involvement and interaction was also well handled, and no one was made fun of, but a lot of fun was to be had.
The musical film noir backing track added further atmosphere.
Overall, this was a thoroughly entertaining half an hour that probably would have been longer with a bigger audience. The tidiness is testament to this performer’s humbleness but also high skill – that he managed the intimate audience as well as he might manage a much bigger one, I am sure.
Well worth seeking out the shadows on the way up the stairs.
