
By name and by nature: the illusionist Derren Brown’s new show, which comes to the West End after a ten-month tour, is a chest-rattlingly entertaining two hours of theatre. It’s moving, thrilling and contains some of the most unearthly sights I’ve ever seen on stage.
It all begins with a man framed in a pool of light. He answers his phone – and, at once, slumps like an abandoned marionette. Then… well, if I gave any more away that would spoil the fun. Besides, I don’t want to find out what unconscious conditioning Brown has laid to ensnare blabbermouth critics.
Suffice it to say, Showman’s talismanic spirit is the American impresario PT Barnum. He coined the phrase “There’s a sucker born every minute”, and was the inspiration for the thumpingly mawkish Hugh Jackman-starring movie-musical. But more charmingly, he also popularised a form of theatre that was lavish and big-hearted.
As his previous tours Svengali and Enigma proved, Brown evidently loves Barnum’s world of late-Victorian fakery. There are no blooms of ectoplasm or rattling spirit cabinets, but the same atmosphere presides. As with the best ghost stories, Brown uses gags and reveals like oubliettes: stumbling into them, you wonder quite how you got there – and how you’ll get out.
In this, the Apollo Theatre is a marvellous partner-in-crime. Gussied up in dark wood and muted gold like Miss Havisham’s powder room, it’s just the space for table-turning uncanniness. Spilling out into the frosty Soho night, still buzzing with what we’d seen, felt wonderfully appropriate. Forget panto – this is the most festive show in town.
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