Influence – Collective Theatre, 2 Tiltman Place, London N7 to 2nd December 2023.

4****: William Russell.

Kit Young is a magician, descendant it seems of magicians, and in this magic show he takes the audience on a journey through illusions of all sorts and does a little mind bending into the bargain. Maybe the running tale about Russian Roulette – the gun belonged to his grandfather and if there is a gun mentioned on any stage it will always end up being fired – is a little difficult to take but it certainly threw the victim from the audience, an influencer with a horde of instagram followers, into a panic when he decided to test out which chamber the live bullet was in. But there is much to admire as he takes us through the acts his grandfather used to perform with some additions of his own – the table round which volunteers from the audience assemble séance style only for it to levitate for no apparent reason, or the cutting a lady in half routine. A volunteer from the audience is placed in a box sitting on trestles is tethered by straps head and toe which come out either end and are held by other volunteers. The lid is closed, the box cut in half with metal plates and each half pierced with a sword. It is then pulled apart. Minds get read, the answers to questions he did not know placed in locked boxes he cannot open are given, and by the end of the evening a baffled audience depart none the wiser. Never forget, however, that magicians always have assistants and seeing and believing do not mean that what you saw was real and that this mind bending, bewitching and bewildering show is called Influence. But at least no rabbits get pulled from a hat.

Kit Young – the Magician.

Director – James Hillier.