Britain’s Got Talent star Jamie Raven is to head up a London run of magic variety show The Illusionists, which has played in 17 countries, including a smash-hit run on Broadway.
Featuring a blend of magic styles from escapology to weapons-based illusions, the show netted $8.1m during its six-week run in New York last year. Performers included Korean star Yu Ho-Jin and Marylin Manson-esque America’s Got Talent performer Dan Sperry.
The London run will feature five magicians: Italian escapologist Andrew Basso, “inventor” Kevin James, mindreader Colin Cloud and archer Ben Blaque, whose segment ends with him shooting an apple off his own head blindfolded. Headlining is Raven, who came second in the latest series of Britain’s Got Talent – his audition video has been viewed more than 11m times on YouTube. After the West End run, Raven will head out on a solo tour of the UK in February 2016.
In the final, he lost out to a controversial performing-dog act, Jules O’Dwyer and Matisse. ITV received more than 1,000 complaints after it emerged that O’Dwyer had used a stunt-double dog for the final, but Raven came out in support of her this week, saying: “She won fair and square … I have no problem at all with what happened – one dog, two dogs, 10 dogs … Any dog that can do a handstand is worth a quarter of a million pounds. If I had it, I would pay to see that.”
The Illusionists opens at the Shaftesbury theatre in November and runs throughout the festive season, but magic fans can head to another major show before that. Impossible opens at the Noël Coward theatre in July, and promises everything from a disappearing helicopter to acrobatics, and a riff on the old “saw a lady in half” trick – this time with lasers.
