A matter of weeks after being delighted and confounded by Derren Brown, I’m very much here for a theatrical deep-dive into the history of illusion that takes in the “Mechanical Turk”, the magic pioneer Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin and the trailblazer in early cinema Georges Méliès. Alexis Michalik’s time-hopping The Art of Illusion – a hit in France as Le Cercle des Illusionnistes – has now been translated for the UK stage by playwright Waleed Akhtar (The P Word). Its Frenchness feels intact, mind you: it’s a jeu d’esprit that, like many a magic show, diverts from moment to moment but offers you very little to hang on to.
We’re lured into Tom Jackson Greaves’s production by the mysterious Watchmaker (Martin Hyder), an immortal spirit of magic who pops up throughout the several story strands. He orchestrates the shifts between 1844, when Robert-Houdin (after whom Houdini named himself) buys himself a theatre; 1888, when the bootmaker’s son Georges turns the same venue into a proto-cinema; and 1984, when romance blossoms between a thief and a woman whose bag he stole on the Paris Metro.
It’s a show that styles itself, like stage magicians tend to, as all-knowing and forever a step ahead of its audience. Unlike successful magicians, though, it’s not slick or skilled enough to pull that off. The relationship with the audience, and the rough-theatre performance style, feels half-baked. The actual magic tricks (skills hastily acquired in the rehearsal room, we must assume) understandably lack panache. Increasingly, too, it begins to feel as if, behind the intricate construction and his relish for circularities and coincidences as his history of French illusion unfolds, Michalik’s play doesn’t add up to much.
That said, I enjoyed getting better acquainted with these vignettes from entertainment history. And the cast do decent work with their fast-rotating roles, particularly Bettrys Jones as the more-than-she-seems victim of thievery, and Rina Fatania mining her various bit parts fruitfully for eccentric humour. The Art of Illusion is not without pleasures but it does lack the confidence and lightness of touch that might make Michalik’s play fly.
At Hampstead theatre, London, until 28 January
