Reviews OWE & Fringe Published 8 February 2013

Barry and Stuart: Show and Tell

Jackson's Lane Theatre ⋄ 7th- 9th February 2013, then touring

New material from the Scottish prestidigitators.

Stewart Pringle

The Magicians is over, and Barry & Stuart are back on stage, where they’re manifestly far more comfortable. Show & Tell, which is embarking on another UK tour, is almost two years old, having debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe back in 2011. Originally marketed as two separate shows, presented here as a single evening with an interval between the showing and the telling, it catches the Scottish prestidigitators in a period of transition.

Prised out of their gruesome comfort zone by their prime time exposure, it’s a show of two halves in more ways than one. Divided into presentation (The Show) and explanation (The Tell), it also sees Barry & Stuart’s ‘Part Time Warlocks’ persona pull against more prosaically presented grand illusion.

The Show is a slightly rag-tag selection of classic Barry & Stuart illusions. There are some very impressive tricks, demonstrating their skill in transforming well-worn concepts into new and surprising set-pieces. They talk about the three pillars of magic; sleight of hand, misdirection and technology, and it’s their engagement with the latter that really sets their work apart.

Quite apart from the high-tech gizmology behind some of their tricks, their act embraces the potential of instant mobile internet access to pull off seemingly impossible acts of prediction. Some tricks are more effective than others (some are very good indeed), but there’s something slightly shabby and awkward about the presentation that makes the first half a disappointment from two of the UK’s most exciting and talented magicians. The Show feels both underprepared and tour-weary, the interaction between Barry and Stuart is strangely stilted, and audience interaction feels strained and uncertain. At times they could almost be standing in a TV studio, penguining awkwardly between takes. Combined with some extremely dog-eared props, all scrumpled paper and peeling paint, the lack of spark and energy gives The Show the definite whiff of stagnation and going through the motions. It’s almost enough to make you call their bluff and skip The Tell altogether, but that would be a mistake.

The second half, in which the tricks from the first are unpicked in meticulous detail (no empty promise here) is quite superb. From the moment they re-take the stage Barry and Stuart are like new men. Their enthusiasm for letting the audience in to their ‘internal lives’; the hidden painstaking trials of developing their tricks; the time, effort and technology that go into performing apparently effortless illusions, feels entirely genuine. They re-capture the boisterous camaraderie and easy manner that guided them through their early Fringe smashes, and the evening swerves back on course.

It’s a risky concept, not in the sense of violating keenly held secrets – because the tricks they reveal are entirely their own creations and, one suspects, ripe to be dropped from their repertoire, but because the evening could become unbearable smug: fodder for the clueless twat loudly proclaiming his puzzle-solving abilities to impress his friends. Instead it’s a breathless tribute to the spirit of invention that makes up one part of the magician’s skill, while at the same time perfectly exemplifying the more important part, the art of performance, of making the risible into the incredible. Because The Tell isn’t really a cheat-sheet or an hour-long spoiler, it’s a show that’s as full of wonder and bafflement as any magic performance: a show that swaps out ‘how did they do that?’ for ‘that’s how they did that??’, it proves that knowledge can be as thrilling and thought-provoking as illusion.

It’s a treat seeing them close the evening with a snatch of 2010’s spectacular 98% Séance, but in giving us a snifter of premium Barry & Stuart, the impression that Show & Tell falls short of their capabilities is compounded. The strength of The Tell may let you forgive the failings of The Show, but this pair have done better, can do better, and it’s going to be great to see where they go next.

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Stewart Pringle

Writer of this and that and critic for here and there. Artistic director of the Old Red Lion Theatre.

Barry and Stuart: Show and Tell Show Info


Link http://jacksonslane.org.uk/

Running Time 2 hrs 20 mins (inc 20 min interval)

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