Review: THE MAGICIANS TABLE, London

You wait all your life for someone to come up with an immersive show which blends magic and cocktails and suddenly London has two. What to do? 

From the outset, its clear that The Magicians Table is too cool for school. It’s certainly too cool for a helpful apostrophe but it becomes obvious very soon that we are talking about multiple illusionists including the recently departed Dieter Rotenburg. This show is his wake and we, the dearly beloved, are gathered here to pay tribute to his final trick and enjoy the company of his fellow professionals.

The location is the same East London warehouse which Swamp Motel adopted for Velvet Pines last year. That dinner/cabaret show was set in a 70s Alpine Lodge with guests being chased around by a huge and slightly terrifying yeti. There’s nothing like that specific sense of time and space here and, in the early part of the night, the most dangerous creature (at least to himself) is Dee Christopher. If seeing him hammering a long nail into his face with the aid of a beer bottle then apparently withdrawing an audience member's blood through a syringe is not your thing, there’s always Nick Curtis and his three-card monte or Harry De Cruz’s own card tricks.

Once ushered into the main space and sat at a table, things become more interesting. Well, at least for a while. Groups of up to six people are sat around one side of a table while a rotating crew of nine magicians move around the room, stand opposite us and deliver short bursts of their stock-in-trade. Meanwhile, cocktails like spicy chilli margaritas and espresso martinis are delivered steadily through the night with mocktails and other drinks available on request.

We hear tales of Dieter throughout the night from the coterie of incredibly polished illusionists and, from a stage at one end of the room, his widow and assistant Calliope (Shea Wotjus) holds forth, aided and abetted by music from Garance Louis. The grieving spouse speaks of her husband’s great works and explains that we are see his final masterpiece: The Magician’s Table. Using a large prop at the back and some mysterious number and symbols written on an adjacent wall, she takes our breath away with a stunning display of prediction (those who have seen some of Derren Brown’s live shows will likely be keeping their breath for something a bit less predictable).

It’s hard to talk about The Magicians Table without alluding to its competitor Rhythm & Ruse which officially opened just a week earlier. Although they have very different premises (the latter is set in a 1920s-style speakeasy), they both offer an immersive night of magic and cocktails. There are many notable comparisons. The first show offers up to eight separate up-close sessions with the magicians, the second only four. 

Having said that, Rhythm & Ruse deploy a more diverse approach: their crew of Jazz Age conjurers features women magicians as well as men (how modern!) and there is a deliberate attempt to showcase a wide array of up-close illusions. The Magicians Table, on the other hand, have an all-male team and a wearying preponderance on card tricks with some repetitions throughout the night (seeing a pack of cards disappear from before our very eyes once is enough, ta muchly). The setups are different, too: The Magicians Table sits their punters around tables with clearly demarcated performance areas but the musical offering is comparatively slight next to Rhythm & Ruse’s lively jazz band who play to an audience sat around cabaret tables. The writing (from Iain Sharkey who won an Olivier for his work with Derren Brown) is a bit deeper in this show with all the illusionists primed with stories to hand about their time with the great Rotenburg. In short, both are decent efforts that are light on story and heavy on the up-close magic. 

The Magicians Table continues until February 2025.

Photo credit: The Magicians Table

 

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