Week Ten

Gothic comedic magic anyone?  Well, that is how I could describe Barry and Stuart, 2 magicians from Scotland.  Vile, yet hilarious could be another way and even another way could be dark, twisted and sickeningly funny.  In fact, they were all these things and just a bit mental.

The Barry and Stuart Show was at The Soho Theatre last week which is one of my favourite little theatres in London as tickets are normally cheap, easy to get hold of and they genuinely have brilliant things on.  I've been many times but never to see comic magicians, so was ready and willing for week ten to bowl me over with a night of trickery and wit.

Barry and Stuart are a slightly odd looking pair, a sort of Little and Large for the digital age but dressed like undertakers and as we were walking in they were just sat there in there suits, drinking tea like they were at their Grandma's house.

The macabre tone started immediately with a trick they did with a polo and some cheese wire.  One of those tricks that makes you squirm into a foetal position in your chair and yet you cannot look away.

One thing I liked about them immediately is that they involved the audience with a lot of the tricks that they did which I always think is great, whether its getting people up on stage, witty banter or just having a bit of charisma.  I can't believe they actually convinced a girl to drink some vodka that had casually whirled up Stuart's nostril and then back through his throat and out through his mouth.  Mmmm.

A lot of the tricks were interspersed with quite random stories and anecdotes from Barry and Stuart's life as teenagers.  I particularly liked their random record collection of Rick Astley, Rolf Harris and some people that sing about gas.  I would have liked more magic tricks in amongst all this, but it was still funny and then just as soon as I was gagging for more brutal behaviour they pulled out the old "nail a spoon through your nose trick" - always delightful.  A needle in the eye and a knife through the tongue were also so lovely to watch.  I sort of think that as I'm writing this I'm making their tricks to be a bit old hat but they weren't at all.  The premise of some of them was perhaps a little obvious but their delivery was just so subversive, almost a little mocking and very engaging.

The "Super Barrio" trick with the coins was brilliant, as was their final act with the x-ray machine: bloody, grim and frankly a little astounding.  I'm still a total thicko when it comes to magic tricks - I just can't work them out, but isn't that the joy with magic?
This week I'm off down Columbia Road and to Seamus Ryan's Sunday Shoots.