I went to Derren Brown’s An Evening of Wonder show last night at the Olympia in Dublin – a truly astonishing evening out. The show is really the most impressive thing of its kind I’ve seen, and lasted a lengthy two and a bit hours.
Since I was first captivated by this performer I’ve wacthed all his TV shows and read some books and so I can hazard a rough guess how he did some of the illusions and guessing games performed last night, but others completely confounded me.
His performance of cold reading from the audience was amazing – whatever about guessing that colin in the third row had a dog called benji who died years ago, guessing that ronan in the fifth row had recently stolen a fax machine from work and should be cautious because he was seen doing it was something else entirely. Perhaps he has plants wandering around during the break listening to people’s conversations? Perhaps statistically there will always be a light fingered audience member called Ronan and it’s a safe guess – I don’t know.
I also don’t know how me managed to levitate a table while a member of the audience rested their hands on it. I suppose she could have been a plant (A plant with a perfect Dublin accent on a 40 date tour) – I suppose it’s possible but not likely. This one really has me stumped – magnets, cables? No idea, and I don’t want to know. What was most impressive last night wasn’t the tricks anyway, but how they were done and the incredibly polished showmanship on display.
A truly fantastic night out and really very very impressive. This guy is something special
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I’m a big fan of close magic, but I also love the big stuff too. My dad was a stage hand for Harry Blackstone Sr., back in the 45s. LOTS of rigged set pieces and mechanical illusions. Amazing stuff.
I was there too on the 12th. I was one of the people to choose a number at random at the end, a 4 digit number. I put down the number of my house alarm. Or so I thought. I can’t remember what number I wrote down, but there must have been some reason why I wrote it, because our 16 numbers added up to 120308, the 12-03-08 the date. This AMAZED me. Truly it did.
After the show I spoke with Derren and was like “You know the code to my house alarm…don’t break in” He was laughing saying “maybe someday” haha. A lovely bloke and a true evening of wonders 😀
Hi Sinead, That really was amazing. I have no idea how he did that. I know in illusions like this, there is usually less choice than the participants think there is – even though they think they are choosing random numbers, in some way, numbers are heavily suggested in a manner they don’t really notice. Is it possible to do this to 1300 people for two hours and not have anyone twigg it?
It looks like it is – There were some occuring numbers – the 500 and 5000 for the hanging box trick – the numbers used in the ‘phone a friend’ and elsewhere – they seemed incidental at the time, but perhaps something else was going on.
Again, I don’t really want to know, as for me the sense of wonder and intrigue was the most enjoyable thing, and I would be only superficially satisfied if I knew how it worked. I’m much more satisfied with being able to suspend disbelief for an evening and be a child again, believing in real magic.