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Ian Keable: Funny Tricks
Bockleton Village Hall
22nd October 2011
Reviewed by Dave Jones
I was driving through Leominster, a lovely town on the England/Wales border, and
was waiting at the traffic lights. Glancing to my right, there was Ian Keable’s
face on a poster advertising a local appearance! A quick call to Ian and I’d
arranged to meet him at the venue to watch the show.
If you imagine Bockleton as nowhere, then we were right in the middle of it!
Nevertheless, a healthy audience of about 75 turned up to enjoy the performance
and a few drinks and nibbles.
Ian divided his show into two halves. The first half followed the premise of
“what techniques does a magician use to deceive the audience?”
Ian is a great fan of the classics of magic and had ingeniously adapted his
patter for standard tricks to fit his theme. For instance, a C&R Rope routine
was used to show how a magician can use comedy to distract the audience;
similarly Ian stressed that the performer should never tell them in advance what
they are going to do while using a T&R newspaper to make his point.
It was good to see the classics still have an impact during Ian’s version of the
“Chinese Sticks” with the Roy Benson third tassel finish.
I enjoyed Ian’s handling of the “Miser’s Dream”, which really is a great effect
for extracting comedy from the situation. This and one of my favourite tricks
- “Cards up the Sleeve” were used to show how an audience can be fooled by pure
sleight of hand. Ian performed them both excellently.
Ian’s handling of the Stodare Egg came straight from his lecture notes and had a
couple of novel touches, as did his streamlined handling of “Sidewalk
Shuffle”. This latter trick proved very effective as a demonstration of
“quickness of the hand”.
Ian’s version of a seldom performed effect, “The Sympathetic Silks”, was
inspired by Potassy’s handling and made an excellent vehicle for demonstrating
“misdirection”. I’ve never been a huge fan of this trick, but Ian’s patter theme
made it logical and entertaining.
The use of a “glamorous assistant” was explained during Ian’s version of Oswald
Rae’s “Holdup” routine, with the aid of a lady from the audience. Once again Ian
had injected his own thoughts, incorporating a novel nest of boxes finish.
Ian’s Himber Ring routine came next. The strength of this effect depends on the
audience being sure that the rings are not switched. Ian has gone for the
traditional “brute force” approach to the necessary sleight and performed this
difficult manoeuvre very well. The audience seemed to be totally convinced.
Once again the Roy Benson influence showed itself during a six billiard ball
production to music, and a Chinese Linking Ring routine, both had many novel
touches and provided an excellent close to the first half.
After the interval, Ian performed his corporate act, which provided a nice
change of pace.
He opened in “mental” mode with a “Brainwave” style effect, which unfortunately
went wrong. Ian was cleverly able to recover later with a callback to this
effect, producing the correct card from a zippered wallet during another
routine.
More classic mentalism with Ian’s “Confabulation” routine followed by Koran’s
“Newspaper Prediction”, incorporating a great bit when selecting a spectator
using cards to select the appropriate form of greeting. I won’t give this away –
go and see the show!
The Koran dictionary test, a date prediction, and a card memory stunt followed,
to bring the “mentalism” portion of the night to a close. It would be a lesson
for all mentalists to see how much humour Ian manages to extract from classic
effects. He doesn’t try to convince his audience of his “abilities”, preferring
to follow the Graham Jolley approach of entertaining them and letting them make
their own minds up.
He closed the show with his handling of the “Electric Chairs” coupled with
the" Cards Across”. Despite having two assistants, who, let’s say, were not the
“sharpest tools in the box”, this brought the house down and got Ian off to a
great ovation.
Roy Benson showed his face again during Ian’s encore piece – the “Salt Pour” for
another ovation, before Ian exited the stage with a nice callback to the music
used in the first half.
The audience left having enjoyed an excellent show, watching an experienced
professional performing great magic in a very entertaining manner.
Watch out for future appearances, and if you get a chance to see the show, make
sure you take it. You won’t regret it!
© Dave Jones, November 2011
www.davejonesmagic.com www.iankeable.co.uk