Jamie Allan’s Amaze – Criterion Theatre, London

Creators: Jamie Allan and Tommy Bond

Director: Jonathan Goodwin

Magic acts in the West End are not exactly ten-a-penny. Derren Brown is the name that springs to mind, having run several successful shows, including two Olivier winners. Some shows, such asThe Illusionists, have had limited London runs as part of a more extensive tour. But a dedicated West End residency for a magic act is a rarity – and one that is now afforded to Jamie Allan.

Amazeis very much rooted in Allan’s past as a child of the 1980s. Even before the opening of the show, the theatre is alive with pop classics from the era, as classic toy adverts play out on the set’s large TV screens. When Allan arrives on stage, he reminisces about his childhood obsession with magic, starting with one Christmas when his gifts included a Rubik’s Cube and a Fisher Price Magic Show play set.

The childhood memories are the excuse to start with some audience interaction. An audience member randomly twiddles a Rubik’s Cube, only to find they have created exactly the same arrangement of coloured squares as a cube that’s been sitting untouched on stage the whole time. It’s a trick that’s both close-up, displayed on the big screens in the first of many uses of onstage video cameras, and showy.

The best of Allan’s work is like that, focusing on table work that the cameras help expand to suit the 850-seat theatre. Other, more large-scale feats, such as using repeated coin tosses to find one audience member who correctly guesses heads or tails each time, feel less polished. Allan talks about his audience being comprised of “dreamers” who come to be entertained and “sceptics” who want to see how each trick is done, and some tricks provide easy fodder for the latter.

But when Allan is on form, the dreamers really get their chance. Allan has some tricks that other magicians have performed – the “ribbon through glass” act, for example – but he gives a different spin to others. A cut rope trick is enhanced by being turned into a UV light show; an “Is this your card?” routine is enhanced by the use of what looks like a pack of blank cards that turn out to be anything but.

Allan has also made his name with his embrace of technology, particularly a routine that utilises four iPads to combine their visuals with several appearing and disappearing sleight-of-hand routines. On press night, the technology for that trick wasn’t working. Still, Allan’s technical prowess is evident elsewhere, with a smartphone calculator routine that impressively allows the payoff to happen on every audience member’s device.

There are a couple of larger-scale illusions, both of which contain nods to his parents, from levitating assistant Natalia Love (dressed as his mother) to making his father’s beloved motorbike appear on stage. But it feels as though Allan is never entirely comfortable being as large a showman as such stunts require. He cuts a self-effacing, gentler figure than many large stage magicians, coming across as more David Brent than David Copperfield.

That’s perhaps whyAmazeworks best when focused on small-scale magic. Combined with Allan’s talk about his childhood and the growing love of magic that has become his career, this is a show that requires an intimate setting. The Criterion Theatre is perhaps as large a venue as this show could withstand without losing the retro warmth that lies at its heart.

Continues until 23 November 2024