“Grandad always said that magic is the story we tell ourselves to make sense of the impossible,” Rufus Hound says in a trailer for his show, The Mesmerist, before adding, “But he’s dead now, so who cares what he thinks.”
The Mesmerist ran at the Watford Palace Theatre in England this March, and received solid reviews. In it, Hound performs his deceased grandfather’s magic tricks, which he found in 2020 during the pandemic. The conceit is that Hound is recreating the single magic show his grandfather performed in 1983.
“The first half plays out like an unpolished but charming trot through some magic circle classics, from guessing the secrets of audience members to having a go at hypnotising us,” said the review in The Guardian.
Arifa Akbar
The show, however, has a major twist or, as The Guardian called it, a surprise “underlying narrative.” We won’t spoil the specifics here, though it’s described in the review as turning “into something more ambitious and artful—a show about a magic show, which simultaneously functions as one.”
The play was written by Maheni Arthur, Georgia Crowther, Lancelot Ellis, and Christopher York, and directed by Steve Marmion. Illusions were from Scott Penrose. There’s no news yet about a West End transfer for the show, though odds seem good it will head there based on the critical response.