No doubt magic has come a long way since the days when Copperfield and Daniels were household names, but there’s little in the way of supporting evidence in this behind-the-times hodgepodge of spectacle and trickery. That’s not to say returning West End extravaganza ‘Impossible’ doesn’t have its ‘wow’ moments, just that the familiar-feeling routines played out by its line-up of wise-cracking men and mostly silent women don’t deliver much you won’t have seen before.
The format has been adjusted for modern attention spans, at least – seven performers share the stage, whose acts range in tone drastically, with no cohesive theme uniting them. One minute whimsical, Derren Brown-ish mentalist Chris Cox is making dodgy knob gags (in between some impressive mind-reading stunts), the next daredevil Jonathan Goodwin is hanging upside down in a flaming strait-jacket.
Easily the weakest link is ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ winner Lance Corporal Richard Jones, whose close-up card tricks may work on Saturday-night TV, but in a West-End stage show simply get dwarfed among the bigger, flashier set-pieces. Recognisable though his face may presumably be, his presence feels clumsily tacked-on.
Still, though the format is clunky and the tricks well-worn, the fact remains that if you’re not somehow awed, impressed or at least surprised by the sight of a blindfolded man crossbow-ing balloons off of someone’s head, or a terrified volunteer being apparently teleported across stage, you’ve presumably been through some very difficult shit. As a great man once said, you’ll like it – not a lot, but you’ll like it.