I’ve been thinking all day of how to write up my thoughts on this without giving away anything massively important, so I’m going to give it a go now, but do understand that the reason it may be short is because I don’t want to ruin it for people who are planning to go unlike some of the local newspapers that have already written reviews of the show when it toured the UK before the current West End run.
As mentioned before, I’m quite a fan of Derren Brown’s work and have been dying to see him live for a while, especially after the airing of his two previous shows – the Lawrence Olivier winning Something Wicked This Way Comes and An Evening Of Wonders. As I enter the Adelphi the stage design is not too dissimilar to his previous shows and is very true to Derren’s style – a sort of Victorian ambience. It is from there on in where trying to describe his show without giving things away is tricky. What I will say is that it is a well-constructed show that pushes all the right emotional buttons in the audience. Brown also has terrific stage presence, which helps when building a rapport between him and the audience. If you do get a chance and you live near London, make an effort to go to his show. I believe some tickets are still available.
A couple of side-notes though. Comedian Mark Watson was one of the members of the audience who went up onstage at random. I only realised this when Watson wrote about it on Twitter. I could have spoken to him outside the theatre – a great opportunity missed. Mark commented on Derren’s blog this afternoon:
I’m Mark Watson and I can promise everyone it was an absolute fluke, except in the sense that I nearly mowed a couple of people down in my desperation to catch the frisbee, as I have every time I’ve seen him. I assumed Derren didn’t know who I was. When I saw this on the blog I nearly had a heart attack, which would have been hard on my heart as it’s only just recovering from [SNIP! Possible clue as to what the show involves - Max]. As ever, an amazing show.
Secondly, those familiar with Andy Nyman (not only the creative partner of Derren Brown but also the gloriously evil TV producer in horror series Dead Set) will be delighted to know that he has a cameo in it. I had to ask him on Twitter last night to verify that it was real and he confirmed it was. I’ll leave those who have seen/will see the show to guess what the cameo is…
