Our premise is a simple one. Evil Magic Gareth has stolen Daisy, the Unicorn. Normal Magic Gareth has a game for him and all of us to play which will, using the three lives available, get him to a point where he can challenge Evil Magic Gareth and rescue Daisy. Or so he hopes.
The fact is that there is little doubt that Magic Gareth shall triumph. The question for us all is twofold. Firstly, will all the magic tricks work, and more importantly, will every child in the room help out?
Magic in front of a group of children ought to be one of the scariest things on the planet. Magic Gareth makes it look easy. Everything worked, and when it didn’t, he used that to make it work even better—clearly suggesting that the mistakes were meant. This is hardly cutting-edge magic, but what it is, is exceptional children’s entertainment. Now delivering in a traditional theatre format, Magic Gareth is able to use that to his advantage by getting people up on stage and making them visible whilst making the working of his act less visible in turn. He even includes a “magic break” to do some tricks to show that, although the story is important, he knows what the crowd craves.
And so it may not be Penn and Teller, nor Derren Brown, there are nods—the ropes and the numbers—to each tradition which means this has a fresh enough look for the parents and some of the kids can just marvel at what they see.
And so on to the second element: the kids.
Magic is no longer about performing in silence when it is performed to children. They simply won’t put up with it. Each and every child in the room wanted to be cleverer than they ought and spot things which should be hidden, but they still did not work it all out. It led to a show where every single child hollered, aahed and awed and just spent time smiling. Those brought up on stage—including the bigger kids too—were captured.
A near full house and around 50 minutes of a quest, based on a video game, which may have nodded to Mario for the adults, and had a box out of Lego like Minecraft for the kids, but Magic Gareth weaved his own brand of magic upon us all.