Thankfully Derren has also opened a west end run of this show this time, and the Home Counties Magical Society hopefully will have some interesting news about that event in the next few days.

Last year Derren didn’t do a run in Reading (possibly to do with the Reading crowd managing to, lets say deviate most of the effects from their intended outcome year!!) but thankfully he’d decided to give them another chance and return to the Hexagon this year. We had back of the flat stalls, center tickets, a very good view point. I think one of the nice things about Derren Brown shows is that the tickets are very reasonably priced (unless you pay the £200 odd on ebay!!) and the programs are a fair price at £5.. anyhow… On entering the theatre I instantly spotted a Malloy Master Prediction box hanging above the stage, that was quite exciting in itself, since I’ve been wondering how it worked (now I know!). The stage was set in the guise of a Victorian front parlour, think Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, seances, mediumship and mystery, fitting the show very well

Before I go further, I should warn you there are some spoilers in this review, so.. if you’re lucky enough to have tickets to the remaining sell out shows.. go away.. come back after the shows run is over.. You’ll just enjoy it more…

The first few minutes of the show is a nice introduction via a projection screen, working round the idea of focus, and not noticing things outside your normal area of vision something thats come back to a number of times in the show.. It also introduces the box hanging from the top of the stage in full view.. This box… obviously is very important..

Derren starts the show with some wonderful effects, again his normal style of mind reading, as always executed without flaw (or.. where it is flawed, it’s flawed for a reason!!). these consisted of the game of Twenty Questions where he correctly ‘guessed’ at six audience members thought of objects, those on stage really looked totally baffled as to how he did it, in fact Derren did the ‘just think of the answers and dont say them’ method on the last person, which confused them even more!! This section was really nicely put together, and showed a slight change from the previous shows in that Derren was predicting what we were thinking of, as opposed to influencing us at the time, so six spectators down, on with more effects..

There was an excellent bank note serial prediction, the numbers obtained from a phonecall to a spectators son, which seemed to go wrong, ending up with the telephoned person having unknowingly predicted the banknote serial number.. To be honest I think this is the main effect from the show that stays with me. The serial number is, as far as I can see genuine, and I have no idea on the method for it, making it a lovely effect.

I think theres a few other things that stood out in my mind as excellent effects, the Question and Answer session at the end (a classic Victorian mental effect he described as ‘The Oracle Act’) was in my opinion perfection.. he executed it flawlessly (although some people say it was a little long taking up the entire second half) and I watched trying to track the various methods at work.. Derren in a nutshell asked audience members in the break to place questions in sealed envelopes into a glass bowl on stage, placing only their initials and row numbers on the outside.

He then picked envelopes, correctly guessing at things like names, or ages or sexes of the people that wrote the question. Once the person was found, they stood, and he started to answer their question, and in a lot of cases started to tell them more details about them, their lifes, illnesses and other personal or secret information that to all the audiences view, he wouldn’t know. I have to say this was probably one of the best executed Q&A’s I’ve seen.

Moving on from divining the questions in the envelopes, he started to pick up questions people were merely thought of, objects in pockets, personal items people were thinking about, and other seemingly impossible things. I can only imagine how amazing and gob smacking this must have been to non-magicians, this was also done blindfolded.

The show ended with the revelation of the box, containing a complete prediction of the outcome of a number of effects in the show, the thought of objects, the hobby of a spectators son who came on stage, and the description of the volunteer who came up at the end to open the box.

However you look at the show and the effects, there are two views… the views of the people around me that genuinely believe that Derren has ‘something‘ which means he can in some way read minds, or reactions, body language or predict things, and the magic view; that this is magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship, mainly showmanship, and flawless showmanship at that..

In either case, you cannot think anything else than.. Bloody hell thats clever..

I went back to the stage doors after the show, my copies of Pure Effect and Absolute Magic, (thankfully ones I brought when they were in print for Twenty odd pounds, and not the ones from eBay at up to £200 plus), were still unsigned and I wanted to see if he’d be so kind as to sign them. I’d been up in London at Tabula Mentis III during the day, and had a long chat with David Berglas before I’d left. He’d given me a message for Derren, so I was on a double mission.

After a brief wait, Derren came out, and was very friendly. He took time out to go over to a camper van to talk with a disabled audience member, and after the crowd had cleared we had a wonderful chat about the show, the message from David and even talked about Tabula Mentis. Books signed we headed off with a friendly wave from Derren and a shout of ‘thanks for coming’.

Of course if you’ve read down to here.. and you’ve off to see the show, and you didn’t heed my warning of spoilers.. you’ll still enjoy the show, since I’ve not listed everything that happens..

I also forgot to say how much the poster (Illustrated by Kerry Donovan) reminded me of the Thurston and Ask Alexander posters from their careers;

A thoroughly wonderful show, as always with Derren. It was an excellent evening, and well worth the money I highly recommended going if you can still get tickets.