Elephant Room

100487 original

Magicians Geoff Sobelle, Steve Cuiffo and Trey Lyford's new sleight-of-hand show is far from the roll-up, roll-up school of magic. The trio have adopted the personas of three ex-rockers—as if Spinal Tap had become magicians instead of musicians—to present a show as much about these three guys and their shortcomings as the magic they will perform for us.

They reveal to us that this room is where the magic happens (not that kind). There’s no elephant here. The room is the elephant. Rather than simply amaze us with tricks, they tell us about their lives, compete with each other for the best trick and try to win our affections with passing glances or grandiose illusions. This dimension can be as hilarious and entertaining as the magic: a wondrous yarn that tells us about pride, appreciation and talent.

Elephant Room delivers all the tricks one would expect in a traditional magic show: levitation, sawing audience members in half, disappear-and-reappear, but tops them all with surreal comedy, glitterball dance routines and bonkers audience interaction. It’s gloriously imaginative storytelling that fuses theatre and magic to meticulous levels.

It’s the precision of the ensemble which pulls the whole show together: they are completely natural, metrical performers who harmonise almost perfectly with each other. Even the tricks which aren’t particularly impressive, the secrets to which are quite obvious, come off. They say a magician should always leave the crowd wanting more: it would seem it’s hard to get enough in Elephant Room.