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54th Bristol Day of Magic
Sunday 11th May 2014
Reviewed by Elizabeth Warlock
High winds and rain could not deter four hundred magicians from attending this
annual one-day convention held at the Winter Gardens and Playhouse Theatre,
Weston-Super-Mare on Sunday May 11, to see some of their favourite magic
performed by top magicians. Under the presidency of Barry Savage, the day
consisted of lectures, workshops, a Dealers Showcase, close-up and gala shows,
thus making it a memorable day.
There were four lectures. Magic Olly covered children’s magic, Ian Rowland gave
us mentalism with a very good song prediction, psychometry test and eating a
light bulb, Gaetan Bloom showed many of his off beat ideas and Denis Behr with
his wonderful long fingers blew everyone away with his superb card work that
included his version of Triumph, a three phase card prediction, cutting the aces
and a number of false shuffles and cuts. Mandy Davis took the young magicians
through their paces, and Master Classes were held by Magic Olly and Dave
Hickory.
In between there was the Close-up show. Denis Behr included card revelations and
a superb Oil and Water routine; Gaetan Bloom did a prediction using cards which
he then explained; Ian Rowland included the Telepathic Card and from a shuffled
deck proceeded to deal multiple poker hands, and Paul Romhany gave us a time
prediction, out to lunch routine, a dictionary test and the Diary Trick.
The highlight of any convention is the gala show, this time named Spellbound,
and it certainly lived up to its name. Emceed by Dean Winters the show opened
breezily with the young, colourful and energetic Euphoria Show Choir prior to
the first magic act, that of Paul Romhany as Charlie Chaplin. Besides an
excellent characterization there was lots of magic like the linking coat hanger,
the reappearing drink, Cecil Lyle Hat, the floating broomstick and the largest
streamer production you are likely to see. Neal Austin 9photo) has to be one of the
funniest comedy magicians around with some great visual effects like the instant
dress change, the torn and restored napkin, vanishing coke bottle and his take
on fire eating using torches instead of flames, all of which had the audience
holding their sides with laughter.
Ian Rowland did spoon bending and a card prediction effect using numbers, and
Gaetan Bloom in the first of two spots gave us the vanish of the bouquet of
flowers, the cut and restored mike lead and his famous card production wearing
boxing gloves.
The second half again opened with the choir but this time with dancing and a
touch of magic with Daniel Dean as the Prince of Arabia with the production of a
girl from an empty cage. Paul Romhany returned this time as a straight magic act
with lots of gags and such effects as the lovely cameo of the linking coat
hangers with a little girl from the audience, and a prediction effects with
three spectators, and Gaetan bloom gave us a somewhat overly long revelation of
a card from a kiwi fruit inside an orange inside a grapefruit.
As good as all this was, the star of the show was undoubtedly Daniel Dean with
Destination Dance. It was slick, beautifully costumed, entertaining with some
great illusions involving dance movement. The girls vanished and appeared in
quick succession, were sliced and floated. There was the substitution trunk, the
Cube, and the comedy Cups and Balls routine using the girl’s head appearing
under the cups. This time though the effect was different for at the end in that
when the curtain surrounding the box was pulled away the girl had vanished. In a
front of curtain effect Daniel gave us a three ring Linking Ring routine. It was
a great finish to the show, and Daniel can take his place among the very best of
illusionists.
Our thanks must go to organisers Amanda Farrell, Dave Alexander, Ozzy Dee, Simon
Lane, Jon Billett, Chris Payne and Bob Chapman for making it all possible.
© Elizabeth Warlock, May 2014