Part-Time Warlocks is going so well here at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The show is selling out every night and, best of all we’ve had some great reviews of the show.
There is an article from The Stage Here. And the lovely people at abcedinburgh.com gave the show the following 5 star review.
“I had a couple of hours to kill so had a stroll around town before returning to the Underbelly for Barry and Stuart: Part-time warlocks in the Delhi Belly at 2220. So mesmerised was I by the show that I discarded my notebook and just watched in awe. Well I was sort of forced to when I was dragged on stage at one point. More on that later.
Any show that start with Huey Lewis and the News’s rendition of ‘Power of Love’ has got to be good. Hang on, that’s not strictly true, I doubt the secret of success is quite so simple, but this one did and it made me grin from beginning to end. Big wide happy grins of genuine enjoyment of this part magic, part comedy, all brilliant show.
From coughing up a Rubik’s cube, to turning water into wine and gin into blackcurrant squash (I know which of those tricks I’d find more useful) the show is truly amazing. Perfectly timed, tightly scripted, beautifully executed, it’s both a wonder and a shame that it’s not in a bigger venue. That said, the smaller venue offers intimacy and the close proximity to this pair of magicians make their understated trickery even more unbelievable.
I was gently forced on stage after a magical device broadcast “my” thoughts to the audience. Apparently I wanted to go up on stage, and help with a mind-reading experiment, and I wanted to take Barry’s hand and be led onto the stage to kind applause from the audience. I wish I could read my own thoughts so clearly. Once up on stage I was instructed to take a marker pen and clipboard with paper on. I was to draw a picture (keeping on the paper, not showing Stuart, and not a pineapple). Uri Geller once did something like this to me and I drew a boat, so I wondered if everyone draws boats. Trying to outwit this fiendish pair I plumped for a quick sketch of the pyramids. Lo and behold, after some supposed telepathy, Stuart also drew the pyramids. I couldn’t tell quite how it was done because I couldn’t see from the stage, but the people next to me asked me if I knew I was going on stage afterwards — as though they couldn’t believe what they’d just seen.
A bit of biblical sorcery, some voodoo and a few funny gags the hour was up and the audience left excitedly talking amongst themselves about what they’d just seen.
Barry and Stuart are not just magicians trying to be funny, they are funny and actually put some other comedians to shame with their inventive deliveries.
Where I paused before giving five stars earlier, this show deserves at least that many. Brilliant. Just brilliant. But not “just” brilliant, it’s so much more as well; witty, tight, slick, clever, fun, incredible, mind-boggling, skillful, welcoming and did I say brilliant?
(5 Stars)”
