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'How
I Feed My Children' The Carl Royle Lecture
The Order of The Magi, Manchester
Tuesday 10th January 2017
Reviewed by Jonathan Royle
Firstly just to set the record straight, myself and Carl are in no way
related, he was born with the surname Royle, whereas I choose mine as a stage
name, it being an anagram of my former stage name Le-Roy.
I mention this as I don't want anyone to think this review is biased in anyway,
I can assure you it's not and indeed it should also be noted that my years of
performing close-up magic at tables and social events are long behind me and
consequently I had considered not even attending this lecture.
Well as it turns out, despite the fact that I rarely perform “Close-up”, I am
delighted to say that I was pleasantly surprised by how much value I took away
from the evening, including much to my surprise at least, two ideas that can
easily be used by me in my Cabaret and Stage Mentalism Shows.
Carl opened by performing an extended example of the kind of things he does
perform when he approaches a table in a restaurant or a group of people at a
wedding or corporate event, and then step by step showed us not only the “how” of
what he was doing, but also I feel more importantly
explained the psychology of the “why” things were being done this way.
His Gold Cup Con is a Micro Chop Cup routine that is performed with the cup
being rested on his own flat palm at all times, thus eliminating the need to
invade anyone's table space and of course making this practical for those
environments where there simply are no tables!
It was a fast paced routine with a patter theme that made the whole thing
logical and entertaining, whilst also having numerous moments of magical
surprise.
Other routines performed and explained during the course of the evening included
a variation on the Ambitious Card plot that was simple in handling but packed a
serious punch with several truly unexpected twists along the way.
A chosen 'card to box' routine was used beautifully to tie things together and
then a true miracle where a blank faced playing card was folded up and signed
by the spectator before magically printing itself (still with the person's
signature there for all to see, on the card) into the exact freely chosen card
that the spectator had just named brought loud applause from all and gasps of
amazement from many.
The evening included many tricks and routines which were all quite clearly honed
to perfection by somebody who has performed them thousands of times with real audiences in real situations, enabling him to iron out all the
snags one could encounter and save us all a massive learning curve by passing on
these wisdoms, experiences and insights.
My two personal favourites of the evening were when Carl asked someone to just
name any playing card out loud and literally a split second later he reached
behind the persons ear and produced a folded up playing card.
At this moment I could hear some people quietly saying exactly what I was
thinking, namely “that can't possibly be the card he just named or can
it?”
Well let's just say that feeling of witnessing “real magic” that we all once had
as a child returned in that moment, as Carl let the person unfold the card
themselves to discover that yes indeed it was the exact playing card they had
named.
It is therefore interesting to note that Carl has named this routine “Child
Like” which is very apt indeed given the impact it has on people.
It may sound too good to be true but let me assure you this was no pipe dream,
Carl had not simply struck it lucky on the night, there was no pre-show work and
this is something that just like every other item in Carl's lecture is a real
“worker” that is practical, commercial and hugely effective.
My other favourite was his method for peeking information that somebody has
written down onto a business card enabling you to apparently read their minds.
As with all of Carl routines, he has thought everything through and engineered
things so that everything can be performed surrounded if required and so that
things are as simple as possible in operation and technique to perform, but in
all cases pack a devastating punch in terms of impact.
This “Peek” is perfect for close-up, but is something that I shall indeed be
using within my cabaret and stage mentalism shows for sure.
Along the way the Psychology behind things and the added gags and insights made
this a truly entertaining evening that seemed to pass by way too quickly.
The lecture is called “How I Feed My Children” and having seen it, I have no
doubt that Carl's children will have been eating very well for years as this was
magic as it should be with the emphasis on impact and entertainment.
My only disappointment was we did not have more time available on the night for
Carl to share even more with us all.
Unreservedly Recommended.
© Jonathan Royle, January 2017