FestBuzz

Who: Chris Cox
Where: Pleas­ance King Dome
When: 8.30pm, Wed 12 Aug — Mon 31 Aug
How Much: £8-£9.50

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “Chris Cox has plenty up his sleeves in this con­fi­dent & rather sweet magic show. Mind read­ing, tech­no­log­i­cal trick­ery & good laughs abound.”

Chris Cox is a slight, geeky look­ing boy who is so sin­cere when he admits to spend­ing much of his youth in his bed­room with a Paul Daniels’ magic set that it’s almost impos­si­ble to doubt him. How­ever, he’s remark­ably at home on stage and the audi­ence instantly warm to him. It seems his rep­u­ta­tion as a reg­u­lar Radio 1 guest goes before him, though it’s not imme­di­ately obvi­ous how magic can work on radio, the least visual of mediums.

Cox’s main “trick” is mind-reading, though he repeat­edly makes the dis­claimer that he can’t read minds. Der­ren Brown is an obviosu com­par­i­son, though the truth is that Brown’s pat­ter about psy­chol­ogy etc. is as much a part of his dis­trac­tion tech­niques as his jokes, so I’m on my guard already as Cox starts ref­er­enc­ing psy­chol­o­gists and soci­ol­o­gists like Stan­ley Milgram.

Watch­ing a magi­cian with a crit­i­cal eye is much like watch­ing a come­dian in the same man­ner: you’re wait­ing to see which way they are direct­ing you in order to work out where the surprise/punchline/magic will actu­ally be. And like watch­ing a come­dian, this crit­i­cal appraisal can ruin the humour by tak­ing the fun out of it. How­ever, it’s good fun try­ing to work out how Cox’s tricks work as he seem­ingly bum­bles through them. There’s lots of dis­trac­tion ele­ments, some good jokes, audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion, lots of puns on the magician’s sur­name and some cre­ative set-ups. By using Face­book, iTunes and his lap­top Cox presents a very mod­ern inter­pre­ta­tion of the ancient arcane arts.

I con­fess, how­ever, that I had a pretty good idea how Chris did every sin­gle one of his tricks and I do think some of the ear­lier stunts in the show needed a lit­tle more work on tim­ing so the cracks in their facade aren’t quite so appar­ent. How­ever, most of the pat­ter was slick, and his charisma car­ried the audi­ence along nicely. He deserved the gasps of awe he got, though he also deserved a few groans for some of the puns. A great night out!

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Elise Bramich