Vincent Gambini’s show is called This Is Not a Magic Show – but that’s the first lie, because it is. Yet it is something more. Nothing is quite what it seems in a magic act when sleights of mind, as much as sleights of hand, are being performed. It’s this tension that Gambini plays with in a clever, entertaining and multi-layered show, which demonstrates that the more you show, the less the audience see.
Even Vincent Gambini himself is an illusion: he’s a character in the 1992 movie My Cousin Vinny, played by Joe Pesci, who wins the trust of another by doing a card trick.
The Gambini on stage has a parallel life as a performance artist called Augusto Corrieri, and while he is immensely skilled as a magician, he also investigates performance itself, and how the audience wants to be deceived and enjoys the make believe. It’s all a matter of presentation. In the theatre, in a magic act, and indeed in life itself, when we are directed to look at one thing, it is often to disguise something else entirely.
Gambini uses that idea very well, introducing red herrings, and mixing up fictions and truths (are David Copperfield and Derren Brown really manning the Magic Circle’s emergency hotline, and does such a thing even exist?) until we are thoroughly and delightedly bamboozled.
“I’ll aim for a mild level of impossibility,” announces Gambini towards the beginning of the show. But there is a high level of probability that this thoughtful, playful and entertaining piece will make you question how we watch, what we see, and expose hidden intentions – perhaps our own as much as the performer’s.
• At Forest Fringe, Edinburgh, until Until 21 August. Box office: 0131-226 0000.
