Cracking the ENIGMA code

[machineman9]

Good evening, I am sure a lot, if not most, of you have heard of the master illusionist and mentalist by the name of Derren Brown.

His latest tour, called Enigma, has less to do with German encyptions but more to do with summoning spirits, reading people's minds and generally astounding the entire audience. I was able to see him perform his show at the Empire Theatre in Liverpool and the place was pretty much packed out (it seats around 2300 people) and the show lasted a good two and a half hours but felt to go on far longer, which was not a bad thing at all.

Though the audience was asked to preserve his secrets, he does tell you how to perform some tricks such as 'seeing a playing card through tin foil'. He was also able to make a good dozen members of the audience fall into a trance and kept them as his dummy for a few acts.

I don't doubt that a few of the tricks were set up, but on the whole it was a fantastic experience and definately a show to see if it comes to a theatre near you. I was able to get seats around the circle, nice and high above the stage to get a great view. However, the majority of audience participation occured in the seats on the ground level so head there if you'd like to be a part of the show.

I know a lot of people think his work is fake, but being there live with him helped to reinforce the thoughts in my mind that the vast majority of his tricks are 'real' (that's a contradiction for sure). He is a psychologist and an illusionist (as well as a few other things) so trickery can be expected.


Anyway, I had a great night and I thought I would reccomend the experience to everyone here. Like with a great film, I can't expose too much or else it would ruin the surprise, but the finale was simply superb.


Cheers for reading.

[skoker]

Lol! . When I first saw thus I thought you hacked the neigmasim website!

[beaky]

I hope he's better than "the amazing K.", who I

[machineman9]

There's one line I always keep in the back of my head whenever watching someone such as Derren, or whenever watching illusions online...

"The secret impresses no one. The trick you use it for is everything".

Behind every illusion there is a very simple and harmless trick, but it is how you show it off that makes it everything to the audience.

Derren was able to put someone into a trance, have them automatic write words (or, in this case, numbers) onto a card and then he sent this women into the crowd to find any member of the audience. The person she chose emptied her pockets of all the money she had and the sum matched the number written by the tranced lady. Moments like those are ones where you question exactly what's going on, but it was