Catching my second show in London this weekend. The first one a couple of months ago was the quintessential West End London theatre experience…Les Miserables. Yes, Les Mis. Why not?…it started here in London, not Broadway.
For my second show in London I am attending happens to be one of my current favourite entertainment acts on TV with a Brit named Derren Brown. His Trick or Treat show is currently on the air.
There are some amazing tricks that Derren Brown does and I’ll see how it all plays out in the 3rd row on Friday night.
Who is Derren Brown?
If you are unfamiliar with Derren Brown, he practices magic and mentalism. Now I have been quite into magic and illusion since I was a child, watching David Copperfield perform tricks like walk through the Great Wall of China. There was something in the bad hair, slutty dancers, and mysticism that was very appealing to me as a small, fat Ninja-to-be with bad hair and no slutty dancers. There have been others that have come along that brought magic into the pop culture like David Blaine and Criss Angel but none in the same way as Derren Brown. I would say Derren Brown is around 60-70% jedimindtricks and the rest illusion/mentalism. I’m not talking paduan level jedi, Yoda level jedi I speak. Derren’s had a number of absolutely enthralling shows including using suggestion to get advertisers to create what he had advertised for them to do, fake a seance, hypnotise someone and put him in the middle of Morrocco as a “trick”, train a grandma to almost win a poker championship not having ever played poker, playing Russian Roulette, etc etc. It’s not just gimmicky magic tricks like magicians in Vegas, this is Jedi. We’ll see how he defends with my Ninja Mind Tricks Friday night.
The best thing about it all is how Derren describes his illusion and trickery:
“I am often dishonest in my techniques, but always honest about my dishonesty…”
Trudat. I’m also always sincere with my insincerity. See what I did there? I am always correct with my incorrectness.
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