Writer: Charles Dickens
Adapted by: David Alnwick
David Alnwick performs the Dickens spine-chiller The Signalman with gusto and to great effect. On the stage of Wilton’s Music Hall, with nothing to aid him but a lectern and a set of delicate lighting changes, he conjures up the foggy gloom of a Victorian railway cutting, the mystified terror of the signalman, and the haunting payoff. It’s a 30-minute masterclass in storytelling, and if that’s all that the evening contains, it would have been reason enough to come. Especially when the story is being told in a setting so absolutely appropriate as the decayed grandeur of the Music Hall. But that isn’t all Alnwick offers.
For the first hour of this 90-minute show, he delivers a series of baffling magic tricks, with a non-stop stream of very entertaining banter and a winning way with audience members. Most of the tricks revolve around prediction, foreshadowing, jovial expressions of the mysterious apparitions that will consume the signalman in the story he is going to tell. While the magic show is happening, the audience is scratching its collective head and wondering how the trick is done, but later, as the story unfolds and we learn about the eerie prophecies that haunt a troubled railway servant, we are reminded of the benevolent assertions made by the eminently unscary magician. Entertaining, impressive, and mystifying, with a bonus of dramatic frisson.
The David Blaine style of close-up magic, using highly telegraphed randomising routines to ensure his audience picks are not plants (although who’s to say the randomising isn’t just another trick? The illusionist’s ability to control the Random is a thing of wonder), and then those audience members having their silent guesses revealed, all of this pre-amble is enormous fun, entertainingly baffling, and very apt. David Alnwick magician hands over to David Alnwick storyteller seamlessly, a nuanced performance that makes sense. That the conjuring feeds into the storytelling so well makes for a satisfyingly coherent show.
So, a magic act that is both accomplished and charming, followed by a piece of storytelling that is gripping and dramatic, and the whole shebang making a thoroughly integrated entertainment, all in a particularly apt setting. That’s a pretty good night out for anybody’s money. Simple, effective, splendid. And the ghost of Charles Dickens might have been looking down and beaming. His legacy is safe in Alnwick’s prestidigitating hands.
Runs until 1 July 2026 and returns 3 Sept 2026 for one night only
