Showing @ Underbelly Cowgate, Edinburgh until Sun 24 Aug @ 16:40
Ben Hart – The Vanishing Boy is a joyful mix of magic and storytelling. As Hart makes balls appear and vanish, rope divide and re-join and swaps a handkerchief for the stone of a peach he weaves together a sweet and slightly haunting story. The audience is taken into the surreal world of illusion, both set in this time while taking place in another.
Aside from the obvious structural benefits this has – contextualising the action and building towards a crescendo in the final act – it creates a show that offers more than cheap tricks. The arc of the show is as carefully crafted and delivered as each separate element of it. Hart’s magic is of the simple variety, a kind of ‘back to basics’ – small golf balls, packs of cards and newspapers form the basis of his material. This stripped-back style places focus back on the skill involved in each manoeuvre and movement. There is little smoke to hide behind.
More than a magic show, Hart’s folkloric production offers the audience a delightful trip into and through the world of visual and verbal poetry. He reinvests intellectual depth into the medium, his own magic a reflection of an ever-changing and inconstant world. With each wave of the hand, what was there before dissolves before your very eyes just as ‘with each step we take we vanish like footsteps in the snow’.