David Eliot Presents EVOLUTION – A Journey Through Magic

Eliot Entertainment—The Rachel Browne Theatre

If you live anywhere in the industrialised world, you’ve seen your share of card tricks and rope tricks. Whenever you watch a magic act, you expect one or two card tricks as a warmup before getting to the good stuff. So what’s the good stuff? Novel tricks, visual tricks, entertaining tricks: anything different and new.

Sadly, half of Eliot’s show relies on cards and another quarter relies on ropes. In fact, he only presents three tricks that are not rope or card-related, and one of them failed miserably while one other was only half successful. One out of three successful tricks = massive failure.

Even with the card and rope tricks, there’s more talk than magic. You sit tediously, spending more time listening to how he uses the trick and only a scant few minutes watching the actual trick.

I haven’t seen such a complete flop of a show in all my years of Fringing.

Ray Yuen