Kevin Quantum: Unbelievable Magic for Non-Believers ★★

Every generation seems to find its own magician, an entertainer who grabs the imagination and defines what “magic” means for that era. In the 1960s and 1970s, David Nixon brought warmth, charm and elegance to television magic, making illusions seem wonderful but accessible right there in your living room. The ’80s and ’90s had the catchphrase king, Paul Daniels, whose quick wit and sense of showmanship had regular audiences of over 15 million tuning in to watch his must-see family entertainment. More recently the likes of Dynamo reshaped the art of magic for a new audience, blending street magic with contemporary style and spectacle. As these magicians rise and fall in personality, they have reflected how magic itself moves in waves, sometimes a mainstream obsession, sometimes fading into the background, mocked for its cheesiness.

For an art form that may date back to the cups and balls magic trick, using stones and small vinegar cups, in Roman times between 50 and 300 A.D. by a group of magicians known as the Acetabularii, public interest in magic shows no sign of (ahem) vanishing.

So what is the magic for the mid-2020s? Given that social media, deep fake, AI and so much else on a daily basis force us to confront the question of what is real and what is conjured up, there’s rich pickings for a magician ready to tap into the zeitgeist.

Kevin Quantum: Unbelievable Magic for Non-Believers sounds like exactly this kind of show. In the foyer, the audience members each have to choose a card stating whether they are a Believer or Non-Believer and take it into the theatre with them. Thus the themes of belief, faith, trickery and magic are all primed – and it feels very now – and yet that very sense of expectation is the first thing to disappear.

Beginning with a trick entitled Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, the trick is stopped because they “haven’t set something up”. Oh yes, we know this game. It’s all gone wrong, but, oh what is this, it all turns out okay. Ta-da! Except because the sound and light cues are a bit all over the place… maybe it does need to start again. Either way, it sets up a sequence where things are pulled from hats, objects seemingly change consistency and breakfast is served, but somehow it lacks the flow and slickness to have the wow factor and ends up as a bit of a dog’s breakfast.

On Broadway this month, after 20 previews and just four performances, America’s Got Talent magician Rob Lake, even with the cameo assist of The Muppets, was forced to do his own disappearing act after what could best be called “middling reviews”. One of the main criticisms is that the magic simply wasn’t large enough to fill the space. In Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre, the usually in-the-round seating was truncated into more of a three-sided bracket, creating its own issues.

With close-up magic, the clue is in the name. In the first half, the audience is too far away from Quantum for these tricks to land. In the second half, when a camera is deployed, the screen on which it’s projected is bleached by the stage lights, making it hard to tell one card from another – and not in the way the magician intends.

That contemporary audiences have seen huge and bank-busting illusions from the likes of Penn and Teller, David Blaine and David Copperfield feeds their appetite for illusions of scale. That’s not what Quantum does, but neither does he successfully ape the psychological path forged by Derren Brown, even though that’s where the show rightfully is leaning.

With the ‘Believers’ / ‘Non-Believers’ concept abandoned almost from the off, with no narrative throughline, the show gasps for air like Houdini in a Water Torture Cell. To add insult to injury, that the pre-recorded voiceover for the second half, welcomes back Quantum afresh (as if he’s never been on) and boasts that the Tesla Coil (soon to be the centrepiece of this act) has not appeared at the Fringe before. Sorry? What Scarborough Fringe is the show referring to? Or is this essentially his Edinburgh Fringe Show with a random first half added on? Like the cutting-the-assistant-in-half trick in reverse?

In this world of political P.T. Barnums, you want a magician to hold you captivated in their world of illusions. You certainly don’t want them to be distracted by their stated desire to hear the football score of the Scotland match playing concurrently to their show. Quantum is by no means a bad magician, but on the basis of this performance, he’s a meh showman. In a trying time for everyone, whether magic believers or non-believers, how much do we yearn for an hour or two of wonder, of illusion and escapism…of magic? Sadly that wasn’t a rabbit Quantum could pull out of a hat for the final date of this Unbelievable Magic for Non-Believers tour.