Stalker is an innovative 90-minute magic show by the Swedish duo Peter Brynolf and Jonas Ljung, directed by Eurovision mastermind Edward Af Sillén. Get ready for fast-paced entertainment combining street magic, physical mentalism, and social hacking — with a climactic plot twist that you’ll never see coming. In today’s society, no one is hidden. Everyone is being stalked, and everyone has become a stalker.
Follow Brynolf & Ljung. They’re already following you.
Written by the performers with Edward af Sillén, who also directs, “Stalker” returns to that fellow in the audience with a copy of his chosen image inside a sealed envelope for its finale. And, remarkably, after the big reveal, the pair proceed—as Penn & Teller have sometimes done—to demonstrate precisely how they had (mentally) coerced their subject into choosing the image he did, pulling back the proverbial curtain in a manner that all but breaks the unofficial Code of the Magicians, I would assume. But given the many wonder-inducing moments that have come before, I doubt they need worry about having their union cards confiscated.
The show’s theme is that cyber culture has made us all vulnerable to stalking. And with the explosion of social media, we are all capable of being stalkers ourselves. They insist their “psychic” skills involve mental manipulation in which they are able to plant images in our heads through various associations and vice-versa. Still hard to believe when we see them reading our minds with consistent accuracy. And yet it’s hard to disbelieve them when they rely so heavily on random audience participation. Take this example: they ask a volunteer to leaf through a random book and pick out a word that only the volunteer knows. And then Ljung starts guessing the word, sounding out the letters one by one.
2024 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway Premiere Production Off-Broadway |
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