Magic: Impossible

Eh, yes. I know I said I was going to a comedy gig tonight. But, you know, I was ambivalent about it - I'd never heard of the comedian, it was over on the other side of town, and I was hardly likely to meet up with the Meetup group anyway! given that I'd never met them before, and most don't have a habit of advertising themselves on the night. So when I got a Londonist email last night with alternative suggestions.. and saw a couple of things I liked the look of.. bye-bye comedy. Again. I suppose I might meet that comedy group someday.

What caught my eye was a magic show called Impossible, at the Noel Coward Theatre. I do like magic, don't see it very often - so this wasn't a hard sell. What was much harder was deciding on a seat. My first consideration was the theatre - this is not a modern theatre, so legroom is an important issue. Sure enough, Seatplan's reviews convinced me that I wouldn't be happy with the legroom in the balcony. For the next price band, I could get a seat in the rear stalls - so that's what I did, in the furthest row forward available at the price - Row Q. I chose an aisle seat, just to be sure of the legroom. And booked on the official website, linked to above - there are plenty of offers, but few, if any, actually beat the official price, and the only real reason to go with anyone else would be lack of availability, or if you wanted a particular seat that wasn't available on the official site.

I hadn't been to this theatre before, but correctly assumed it was somewhere in the maze of streets around Leicester Square - to be fair, most of them are! So I checked Google Maps - which showed me that, indeed, it was just to the back of the Tube Station. And for some reason had me doing a roundabout route, up Cranbourn Street and onto St. Martin's Lane! when it was plain to see that it was much quicker just to turn left from Exit 1 and take the second left, just past Wyndham's Theatre, along St. Martin's Court, to come up along the side of the Noel Coward Theatre. I see they have now included that route. Anyhoo, taking that route, and carefully skirting the homeless man in a sleeping bag on the corner, I found myself at the theatre in just a couple of minutes.

I advise advance booking for this show - not only was it nearly full (on a Monday) but I daresay the box office would find it too taxing to try and sell tickets as well as provide them to prebookers - box office collection is the only option available to late bookers, or overseas customers, and the place was frantic. An usher actually removed the rope barrier to allow me a route away from the box office. It's well enough signposted, and - ignoring the merchandise stall - I made my way to my seat. Where I had the most excellent legroom, and a perfectly good view.

Each seat was provided with a small envelope, tucked into the nook between the seat back and the left arm. A label on the front said not to open it until instructed to do so by the illusionist. Vaguely ominous music was playing, there were some light effects, and it wasn't hard to guess that the small boy wandering, apparently unchecked, through the auditorium, playing with a toy helicopter, was actually part of the show. Sure enough, eventually, he made his way onstage, apparently surprised to have the spotlight on him, and took a seat to the side, where he became engrossed in a book of magic. This was the basis of the theme of the show, which was to return to a childlike sense of wonder at the impossible.

No fewer than eight magicians participated, and although at least some are probably household names - not in my household, I'm afraid. The whole show takes on that X-Factor type vibe - blaring rock music, strobing lights, magicians in leather jackets. And I had an absolute ball! The tricks start out standard enough - the type of thing you think you can figure out. Even at that, the sheer speed and dexterity required to carry out some of these illusions are awe-inspiring.

Katherine Mills concentrated on tricks that involved cards and interlocking rings - for the latter, she climbed to the Royal Circle to sit with the crowd. A couple of the others also provided card tricks - for these, and other performances that would benefit, there were cameras that fed to screens at the side; the feed was also displayed on a backdrop to the stage. But there were plenty of more spectacular acts.. Jonathan Goodwin displayed a variety of talents, including escaping from a straitjacket while hanging upside down with his legs on fire, balancing on nails, and shooting a crossbow at his visibly nervous assistant (who turned out to be his wife). Jamie Allan was enduringly spectacular, performing levitation, playing with lasers, and doing amazing things with tablets. Chris Cox was the most memorable name - he made sure we didn't forget it, clever lad, by constantly repeating it as he performed his mentalism. And the magician responsible for our envelopes was Luis de Matos, from Portugal, who was probably the most endearing.

Ok, here are the tricks that impressed me most: I know the standard sawing the woman in half trick, but I don't get how they do it when there's nowhere to hide the rest of her inside, or under, the box. There were lots of very impressive tricks that involved people disappearing from, and reappearing in, boxes with no apparent trick exits. There was an amount of appearing and disappearing of large objects - a car, a helicopter - from the stage. And even if you figured - ah yes, during that bit when the screen was obscuring our view, they could have swapped these people (or whatever) - they had an average of two seconds to do it. Kudos! Oh, and those envelopes? A very clever trick - four old magicians' postcards in each envelope: turn them over so you can't see the faces, tear the bundle in half, then spend ages shuffling them, taking one aside for later. Start to discard them, and it seemingly doesn't matter what you do to them; when you're left with one card, it'll be the half that matches the one you left aside. I'm sure there's a simple formula, but it was very impressive.

Note: if you sit in the stalls or Royal Circle, you're liable to be picked on. There's a fair amount of audience participation (aside from the envelopes), and the front two rows - and the end of any row - in the stalls is a dangerous place to be. For the bit where they needed several audience members to form a ring onstage around the car that was to disappear, all the magicians scuttled down to the audience, and one positioned himself right beside me and was obviously torn between me and the lady in front of me, also on the end of the row. So I put on my best frowny face (perfected this technique in school) and he picked her instead. Really, I felt I could live without the t-shirt that came with audience participation.

Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys magic. Runs until the 29th August, and booking is strongly advised - this is an immensely popular show.

On the way back, the guy in the sleeping bag was gone, to be replaced by a guy with a dog, looking dejected, sitting at the station entrance. Really, it'd break your heart..

Tomorrow is looking like a film. After rejecting some films I really wouldn't be interested in, I was left with two at the top of my list (in terms of IMDB ratings) - The Last Sparks of Sundown (a comedy) and The Wrecking Crew, a documentary about the musicians that played on many hit records of the last century. Both look excellent. Honestly, I'd prefer the latter, but it's only on in East Dulwich, for goodness' sake! An hour's journey.. naw, I'll head to the comedy instead, in the familiar (and closer) surrounds of the Prince Charles.