Review: ASI WIND: INCREDIBLY HUMAN, Underbelly Boulevard

US-based magician Asi Wind brings his latest show Incredibly Human to Underbelly Soho this week and raises eyebrows, though not always in appreciation.

He explains the title of the show as a description of his twin desires to be both incredible and credible (despite then announcing that he will lie to us “a lot”). He begins with the usual shuck and jive we come to expect these days from his profession, the metaphorical rolling up of sleeves to tell us all that there is no mystical reason for what we are about to see and that everything is ultimately down to very human physical abilities and clever illusions. This lack of original opening sets the tone for a show which often feels derivative.

Frankly, I expected more. The Israeli-born magician moved to New York in 2001 and, over the next two decades, has risen to the top of his field. He is a long term collaborator of David Blaine, he fooled Penn & Teller with an unusual card trick and, after his well-received off-Broadway 2022 show Inner Circle, Incredibly Human is hardly his first rodeo. 

He starts with a feat of skill that highlights one of the show’s downsides. Despite lauding the flexibility of the venue to be configured in a myriad different ways, Wind has chosen to go for a standard black box arrangement unlike sdometyhing akin to the more intimate steeply raked seating he used for Inner Circle. This means that those towards the back or over to the sides may miss details of his more intricate illusions, especially the ones that use smaller props like Rubick’s cubes or a scrunched-up ball of paper. 

Wind's mastery of close-up magic has been adapted here to fit in with the environment with a three-card monte presented as three envelopes. A 13-year-old picked from the audience is told that one contains £5 and the magician comically steers him this way and that as the teenager makes his choice. Although they select the “correct” envelope, before they eventually walk away with the fiver, the other envelopes are shown to contain even more (£20 in one and £100 in another). 

There’s no denying the slickness of the routines or the likeability of the man. For Incredibly Human, Wind has worked with a director Seth Barrish to enhance his stage patter and he comes across as ever-friendly and most of his gags land. He has a pattern, though, of veering into rather dull storytelling, evoking as he very often does his childhood growing up near Tel Aviv and seeing a handkerchief disappear from a magician’s hand. His avowed disillusionment at knowing how it was done was perhaps his motivation for developing more intricate illusions like the one he showed to Penn & Teller. 

Unfortunately, while Wind has a fluent technique, much of what we witness here is devoid of the kind of invention and ingenuity shown in his previous work. A test of memory sees him call out in order all 52 cards from a shuffled pack, something which is almost as exciting as it sounds. A page is set on fire, burns into thin air and then (predictably) re-appears within the book it was taken from. Somewhere in the middle of the show, there’s a strange non-magical mnemonics lesson to help us remember eight unconnected words which are shouted out from the audience (he wasn't familiar with “gnome” so asked for “something that is used everywhere in America”; inevitably, the next suggestion is “gun”). One musical segment in which Wind becomes a kind of human Shazam ends with handbells playing a famous 1930s movie song and is reminiscent in style and finale to one seen last year in Derren Brown’s Unbelievable.

London is going through a bit of a moment in terms of magic shows. Rhythm & Ruse and The Magicians Table - two new immersive experiences based around cocktails and close-up illusions - have opened in the last couple of weeks, Jamie Allan's Amaze is coming next month, Derren Brown brings a brand new show here in February 2025 and, later that year, Penn & Teller will have their first West End residency at the Palladium as part of their 50th anniversary celebrations. Strangely, especially given Wind’s talents and achievements, Incredibly Human doesn't stand out in that crowd given that, while it is undeniably fun, it lacks production values, a consistent and thought-provoking concept and a genuine wow factor.

Incredibly Human continues at Underbelly Boulevard until 5 January 2025.

Photo credit: Asi Wind

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