What do you get when you subtract the hip alter ego from magician Steven Frayne? And, for that matter, most of the showmanship from onstage conjuring? You get this set from the artist formerly known as Dynamo, his first performed under his own name, after a stint in hospital (Frayne suffers from Crohn’s disease and arthritis) left him doubting he’d ever perform again. It’s an unorthodox show, because our host eschews the usual hype that inflates great magic into dramatic theatre. In its place, vulnerability and a seeming emotional honesty, as 42-year-old Frayne reconnects with his craft and builds a new identity out of the ashes of his old persona.
The tricks are strung together by autobiography, as Frayne gives us a slideshow of family photos, remembers the grandad who encouraged him to take up magic, and screens a video of his recent medical woes. Ostensibly, the tricks are tailored to the personal story – and to Frayne’s recent insight that “the magic is in other people”. In practice, this means audience participation, and the illusion that they are the ones supplying the wonder.
In one striking moment, random numbers generated by the audience add up to … well, I mustn’t spoil the astounding punchline. In another, a couple from the crowd miraculously swap cards enclosed in their respective fists. Then one manipulates the other’s body by adjusting the limbs of a wooden dolly – a hypnotic feat no less remarkable when, clearly to Frayne’s surprise, it inexplicably stops working.
Even acknowledging that showmanship in magic shows can shade into bunkum, it’s missed here. Some of Frayne’s stunts under-deliver on gasps, purely because he doesn’t big them up enough. There’s a sightlines issue too: sometimes, sat on the edge of the stage, he becomes wholly invisible (and not in a magic way) to the back few rows. But there’s ample compensation in Frayne’s warmth and openness, and quite enough of his routines here (the page mysteriously ripped from a book; the number of cards in his hand correctly guessed each time) are sufficiently astonishing to require no theatrical embellishment.
At Underbelly Boulevard, London, until 11 May
• This article was amended on 8 April 2025 to remove a description of the audience members who participated in the show as Steven Frayne’s “stooges”. In magic, this term refers to audience members who are secretly in on the tricks.
