The Colour Ham

In the Fringe-centric arms race to make magic cool, there are a few major players: coiffed and eyelinered solo men, the glitzy Vegas-circuit jet setters, and John Edwards-style spiritualist spanners. The Colour Ham provide us with a hugely refreshing alternative: just three dudes. They're Scottish. They're funny. They 're a little gross. We are sold.

Colin McLeod, Kevin McMahon and Gavin Oattes take us through a spate of low-impact first-act magic tricks, which are artfully punctured by bits of daft fun. McLeod and Oattes tackle a spin-the-bottle bit with—ahem—impressive committment. There is a black lycra body sock. There seems to be no recipe, no comedy-to-magic ratio to Ham, which makes us more willing to ooh and aah at the magical bits of their act.

They are happy to have the climaxes of tricks drowned out by a particularly good punchline, perhaps because McLeod, McMahon, and Oattes know their audiences so well (about half of their Caves crowd were clearly already fans). They're more transparent than most comparable acts - in their strongest moment, McMahon illustrates the power of misdirection and peripheral blindspots with an onstage volunteer. The result is that we're genuinely amazed by the more magical qualities of sensory perception, rather than simply getting to the bottom of a gimmicky trick.  

Ham aren't trying to sell us on their edgy brand of party magic - they give audiences an hour of tongue-in-cheek mischief and intrigue. Whether technically skilled magicians would be bowled over is another question. But then, who invited those guys?