The Champions of Magic comes to Hastings’ White Rock Theatre next week, April 12th.
The theatre (apparently the metric spelling of “theater”) is billing the evening as a chance to encounter an “award winning team of liars, swindlers and cheats for a spectacular night of trickery you’ll be trying to work out for a long time to come.”
What a great craft we practice. There are few professions where an audience could be asked to pay to see “liars, swindlers and cheats.” Strangely, we work in two of those crafts: the law and magic. Perhaps it says something about us or perhaps we should avoid introspection because it leads to the spiraling agony of regret and shame. Either way.
The Champions Of Magic features four of our best doing what they do better than any of us.
Three veterans of our art will perform: Luke Jermay is well-known to audiences and magicians on both sides of the Atlantic ocean and was most recently headlining in Las Vegas, was the inspiration for the American television series The Mentalist and consults with Derren Brown to produce some of the most stunning effects seen by modern audiences.
Ali Cook is the star of Sky One’s Secret World Of Magic, Monkey Magic and Dirty Tricks.
Fay Presto, is distinguished member of The Magic Circle, has been personally requested to perform for Queen Elizabeth six times, is a favorite of JK Rowling and appeared on the ITV’s Heroes Of Magic.
They are joined by the 2012 Magic Circle Close-up Magician of the Year Edward Hilsum — billed as one of the world’s top young magicians and has received great praise from Derren Brown.
Promoters promise a combination of elegant classics and cutting edge alternative magic resulting in “a mastery of card manipulation, death defying stunts, sleight of hand and spectacular illusions.”
We wish we had a way of getting to Hastings to attend this amazing collection of amazing talent and can only hope it will be exported to our shores like the other great UK products: fish and chips, The Office, table manners, The Beatles, some seasons of Doctor Who, statistics-based epidemiological public health, the ruler (not the “Ruler”), Benny Hill, English Muffins, Canadian Bacon (indirectly) and the ability to identify non-toxic mushrooms in the wild.
