Review: Magic!

Scamming is the art of charm

The artistic levels of contemporary circus are not appreciated in Lilla Teatern’s Magic!show. Magic is about tricks that are tied together by magician Robert Jägerhorn.

Jägerhorn’s ice-melting smile will win over even the most cynical viewer. It also gives the final touch to a deceptively homespun-looking performance, but built with watchmaker’s precision and fine-tuning, which took Jägerhorn and director Neil Hardwick several years to prepare.

Jägerhorn, who started at the age of 12 under the tutelage of Solmu Mäkelä , graduated from the Theatre Academy in 1991, but for the past ten years he has focused solely on his work as a magician. The theatre background gives the performance a lot: charisma, careful and nuanced character work and generally enjoying contact with the audience are not self-evident for magicians. Jägerhorn has plenty of these strengths.

The audience spends a charming, light and mocking hour that is bubbling with silent film mimicry, Chaplin-like blundering, suspense and vanishing tricks.

The frame story of the show tells the story of Alfred Hitchcock’s first film, Number 8 (1922), which for some reason remained unreleased and also disappeared from the Paramount archives. A pirated copy of the film has now been found in the archives of Jägerhorn’s grandfather. In the script, Hardwick leaves the responsibility for the truthfulness of the story to the audience.

In any case, Jägerhorn shows clips from the films, or at least tries to show them. The magical atmosphere of the film is conveyed, although perhaps not in the most traditional form.