talkmagic.co.uk

Hi all,

I've been away for a while and during that time have seen some great magic and I thought I'd share my experiences here.

The 1st was I saw John Archer for the 3rd time this year at a Christian event - he was doing his normal act and all I can say is the man is excellent. Sometimes with "comedy magicians" I find there isn't enough magic and the magic there is is poor and too lengthy I prefer magicians who are funny usually not magicians who advertise themselves as being humorous on the same level that they are magical (I hope that makes sense it's fairly hard to articulate in type and remember the feelings expressed are my own personal ones). However, John's act is both hilarious and magical he handles his audience excellently. Amongst others he performed:

Balloon Swallow
Tossed Out Deck
Book Test
Blindfold Trick

All were performed to a very high standard and got great reactions.

In short, John is not only entertaining and well worth going to see but from a magicians point of view John provides an excellent lesson in audience management, he was heckled a few times by the same people and handled that brilliantly - putting the heckler down without being too harsh and turning the audience against him.


Then I went to the USA with my parents and happened to be in New York on a Monday night. EXCELLENT!!! I went to see "Monday Night Magic" off Broadway.

The Master of Ceremonies was Jamy Ian Swiss who has been on TV and written books he is one of the producers of MNM. He was brilliant. He was funny and kept the show moving nicely. He also performed:

A card prediction effect
An egg bag routine
Jumbo card story trick thing, which is hard to describe but very amusing.

The 1st act was a man called David Oliver who did his whole routine including:

The best Dove productions I have ever seen (about 7 appeared)
Linking Rings a nice routine
Zombie ball (I think it's called - where a ball floats on top of a large silk)
He finished by making the birds and the cage vanish.

David's routine was excellent - magical and entertaining.

Next was a magician from Vegas called Scott Hitchcock who did too many tricks to list but he was excellent (my favourite act) he finished with Paul Harris' effect where the "fizz" from one can travels to another - this worked very well on stage. He also, finished with a great audience rapport.

There was a little close up in the interval those performers were:

David Condon
Matthew Holtzclaw
Andy Roberts

Finally the evenings was finished by Jeff Moche. The few tricks Jeff did were excellent but I felt he was more a comedian with a few tricks and I'd paid to see magic so would have much preferred a magician with a few jokes. He finished with an SJ escape, which he did in less than a minute, but the build up was far too long over 10 minuetes easily. He practically did a stand up section under the guise of a trick but he never did one in the end and that section dragged on a little.

I do not like being negative about other magicians but his humour (although hilarious in parts) was far too crude in parts especially for a family show.

It was still a fantastic night and if anyone is in NY on a Monday I can't recommend this enough it was great. Yesterday they had Simon Lovell!

All in all some excellent magical entertainment.

Very cool.

Glad you had a great time mate.

I'm hopefully seeing John Archer next week at GREENBELT. (A christian music fest.)

Cant wait.

Also seeing JOE PASQUALE live very soon! (i cant descibe my excitement)

Anyway. Glad you enjoyed yourself and got some magic happenings in too!

Good luck with your exam results!