Last night I ventured down to Kingston, Surrey "for an evening of comedy, astounding mind-reading, close-up magic, large scale illusions and terrific stage acts"

The Surrey Society of Magicians put on an evening of Magic.

It was very well attended and the Rose Theatre is a fantastic space, three tiered levels of seating.

So the evening started well with the 1st stage act Steve (cant' remember his family name, sorry), a competent children's entertainer with some nice stuff.

We were then ushered out into the foyers and 12 close up magicians attempted to entertain us, unfortunately apart from one, I couldn't see or hear them and there was a lot of standing around. Several people complained and walked out. I think it went on for too long and the magicians need to project and hold their hands up in the air. It needed to be more street than intimate close-up.There was only one guy that performed up to the level required and that was Theo the Magician.

So then we went back into the comfort of the theatre and saw more stage acts. I can't remember names aparts from Michael Pearse - a spritely gentleman of the elderly persuasion, who was around performing in the days of Variety and Music Hall. He did a fantastic juggling and equillibristics act whislt continually telling funny/bad jokes.

And the finale of the evening was a Mr Graham Lee! Graham performed his classics of magic with balloons. Although I have seen it on video it was great to see it live. Some of the magic was fantastic. I particularly liked the colour changing balloon and the three balloons of different lengths or unequal balloons. The finale was Graham attempting to climb into the giant balloon to do the snowstorm effect. The first balloon burst, Graham was getting  nervous. The second balloon burst. He was worried now and covered well-ish! So to the third and last balloon which had to work.

It did, (phew) and was excellent.

An interesting and enjoyable evening.

Hi Danny, thanks for coming along and doing the filming for me, first time I've been to this theatre and it's really nice. There is a 30/35 ft gap to the first row so you think "oh dear" and then people come with their cushions and sit on the floor to watch the show which was nice. They had a good turn out of just under 600 people, I think the venue hold around 850'ish but with the close up restrictions the 600 is the maximum the theatre and magic club like to book.
It's funny how little things throw you off sometimes, my stage set was put behind the line instead of infront so I was a few feet further away from the audience so restricting my view with lighting etc. I prefer to see the punters and the whites of their eyes to get some feed back and repore going, then I was performing a new three phase cut and restored effect which for some unexplained reason just dropped out of my hand which was no major problem but it throws you off, I actually changed the order here as the next effect the linking rings is the one that has the most chance of not working so I put the vanishing bag of mystery here which normally works well and gets a few chuckles, then the linking rings worked a dream, so you win some loose some   The joy of working live theatre.
Then for the first time ever I get a round of applause for blowing the 6ft balloon up    as they say first time for everything, it did build this part of the act up and I have to say if I'm honest I would like to perform this effect as it went on Saturday night, even though the cost of popping two big balloons and then the worry of the last one actually working out. I've not looked at the video yet but it certainly seemed to build it up with an excellent reaction when we succesfully completed the effect, for me it seemed like the audience were willing for the last balloon not to pop, I could feel the love coming my way and think as Danny said just about held it together, well I was still smiling.
It was good to hear from Danny what peoples reactions to the act were, will look at the video later if I can find the leads from the telly to camcorder.