@ Summerhall, Edinburgh, until Fri 3 Jul 2015

Luke Eaton brings his show of Late Night Horror Magic to the Magic Festival for an hour of gross-out, silly comedy.

At the beginning of the show, Eaton promises a show like you’ve never seen before – he says you might like it, you might not, but it will be something new. His first ‘trick’ is performing a mind-meld with an audience member. He tries to guess the card the gentleman from the audience is thinking of – it magically rises from his hand with a lot of theatrical straining and red-faced sweating. The name of the card is revealed by the audience member and Luke quickly lowers the card, defeated. It is silly, but undeniable funny. It is also, undeniably, not really magic. Eaton takes these moments and makes them his own, however, not promising mind-blowing magic but another breed of performance altogether.

Eaton is a very likeable host, keeping the audience laughing along and creating a great late night atmosphere. Most of his act, and the act of the guest star he had on Thursday night, are dressed up with lots of premise and pauses for the audience to revel in the horror of it all. A card trick by Eaton, for example, is quite a simple card trick but it’s impressively dressed up in the gross premise of having the card nailed to the magician’s face. It’s definitely something new.

Eaton’s guest star on Thursday was Iain McCarron. He was introduced as the world’s first Inebriationist and he lived up to the name well. Presenting an act in which he guessed the different types of alcohol in 5 different cups, through the taste buds of a volunteer from the audience. His ‘isolation booth’ was a cheap gift bag that he stuck over his head and was pleasingly silly. His act was good but could do with some polishing – it dragged on for a little too long. This, possibly, might also have been due to an audience member who couldn’t quite understand the rules of the game. The success of Eaton’s show will often largely be down to his guest act and unfortunately the pacing of this particular show felt a little off.

There aren’t many moments of being blown away in this show but it doesn’t pretend to be a show that will astound you with great feats of magic. It’s an hour of silly fun with a good few laughs. Eaton does delivers on his promise to bring something new to the audience and there are definitely some visceral, stomach churning moments. All in all it’s a good hour of fun that’ll have you covering your eyes at times and laughing, clutching your stomach at others.