Performer: Dongjin Li
Dongjin Li presents Touch Miracle, just under an hour of close-up magic presented with quiet charisma and cheeky humour.
There are card tricks, with a signed card appearing in all sorts of unexpected places. Rings are taken from the audience and turned into an interlocked chain and back again, paper is swapped from the mouths of participants and swallowed needles are threaded onto a string. One particular trick involves guessing words chosen by audience members from seemingly random books. Another has a couple with their eyes closed and when Li touches one person, the other feels it.
The man is also a dab hand at cutlery. Uri Gellar may have bent spoons but Li can make forks fold without seeming to touch them, rearrange the tines into flowers and represent the card picked by an audience member.
Delivered in English with occasional Mandarin interjections, Li eases the audience with a number of little jokes, such as reminding a volunteer to sign the face of the card and not their own face. This gentle presence and the delicate movements of his hands draw the audience in until they are all sitting on the edge of their chairs. Many of the tricks elicit genuine gasps of amazement with the audience turning to each other to check they aren’t the only person to have been surprised. Before a big trick he tells the audience not to blink, he doesn’t need to, the audience barely breathes.
When Li isn’t plying his patter and the focus is on whatever object he is manipulating, stirring music plays. This can be a little too loud and the emotional, wonderstruck nature of the music can feel a little too leading. It’s when he chats quietly to his audience that the magic really happens.
For his encore, he performs a simple trick with a cup that seems to produce an infinite supply of balls. As he does this he talks about his mentor Chen and how Chen wouldn’t let him onto the ball secret so he would always be able to experience the wonder of magic. Li describes how a magician doesn’t keep the secrets of a trick from his audience but keeps it for his audience to preserve the magic. It may be that none of the tricks are particularly original or new but a performer such as Li can make them feel so and delay the rational part of the brain until the way home.
Reviewed on 25 June 2023 and returns on 5 August for the Camden Fringe
The Reviews Hub Score
It's magic.
