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Penn and Teller
HMV Apollo, London
Wednesday 14th July 2010
Reviewed by Merlin Dunlop
This
was a rare opportunity to see Penn and Teller in the UK. I had heard before the
show that they wouldn't be doing their bullet catch because of UK health and
safety regulations, but I was excited to be seeing world class American magic in
London.
There was a huge number of reasonably well-known magicians pottering about in
the street around the Apollo before the show. The venue is one of those strange
places which was once very grand but is starting to show its age. That being
said, the seats were OK, and the sound good, though the camera which was
enlarging the action onto two large screens seemed to cut out at times – it was
not clear if this was operator error or a technical fault.
Anyway, the show started more or less on time and with typical energy, Penn
launched straight into the action, with Teller remaining silent as always. After
a noisy start, involving Teller arriving on stage with his head encased in
concrete, Teller did his fish tank/money routine which was a delight and one of
the highlights of the show for me. They followed with quick pieces of visual
theatre interspersed with more involved routines including a very clever
underwater card through glass. A hilarious cut and restored routine was done
with a child from the audience and quasi-religious patter.
After the traditional interval, they did a book test with joke books, a chair
suspension which seemed to go slightly wrong in the sense that the audience
member who participated seemed to be unable to follow instructions and she was
only truly suspended for a millisecond – something perhaps only a magician would
notice.
After some more theatrical pieces and a great routine with an industrial nail
gun, the final piece was a demonstration of fire eating which I think is one of
their signatures; at least I'm sure I've seen it on the Best of Magic or
something in the 80s. As a closer to such a massive show, however, it felt to me
like a slight let-down. What I mean to say is that the individual routines were
on the whole so entertaining and polished, I was expecting the overall show
structure to have had a bigger 'bang' at the end. I suspect that the removal of
the bullet catch may have had something to do with that...
All in all, though, it was a very enjoyable show and a good chance to see some
clever magic with very entertaining presentation, not something always easy to
come by in today's world of YouTube wannabes.
© Merlin Dunlop, July 2010