INTRODUCTION

Derren Brown is a performer who aims is to control people's behaviour, and make them believe the unbelievable. He has an uncanny ability to put ideas into people's heads, which he combines with classy showmanship. The man is smooth. He has a very successful series on Channel 4, which I have thoroughly enjoyed and a new series, "Trick of the Mind" starts tonight. In the show he does things like getting people who answer a ringing public phone to fall asleep, and making a London taxi driver unable to find the London Eye! He is also a controversial figure, allegedly having received the most complaints ever about a television programme when he broadcast a "séance".

THE SHOW

However, I was keen to see him live in action, and so, judging by the size of the audience, were many others: over 1,000 of us squeezed into the Hawth Theatre in Crawley last night to see him do his stuff. After all, when you watch the TV programmes, you do wonder whether it works every time, and even though Derren claims that no stooges or actors are used in the show, there can remain that tiny element of doubt (by old cynics like myself). At £18.50 for a ticket, it wasn't cheap, but the show is a solid 2 hours of entertainment, so I think that it was worth it.

I will give a brief outline of some of the "tricks" that were performed in the show, but I am not going to reveal everything, especially about the second half, as Derren specifically asked the audience not to reveal certain elements. Suffice to say that he performs some feats which, for insurance purposes, could not be shown on TV, and which the title of this review refers to! Not for the squeamish, and definitely not, as the flyers and posters for the show indicate, suitable for children aged under 12. Personally, I would say the show is not suitable for children at all.

The show opened with a spotlight trained on a large card in the centre of the stage, marked with a question mark. Derren came on and picked a member of the audience by throwing a toy monkey out into the audience, which was then thrown onwards twice. This lady was asked to think of an animal, and invited on stage. When the card was turned over, it revealed a ridiculous sketch of the most non-descript animal ever. We all laughed, and Derren had us. We liked him.

Of course, the animal that she had chosen (a rabbit) turned out to have been predicted in another way.

Then Derren did a segment with five members of the audience, who were asked to pull a small ball out of a bag, without showing it to anyone. Four of the balls were white, and one was black. Derren instructions were that the person with the black ball should answer the truth to a simple question that he would ask; the others should lie. He easily distinguished the truth teller from the liars, who were despatched back to their seats one by one. In fact one man didn't even get to say anything, which was quite amusing - he simply looked guilty and Derren asked him to hand over his white ball!

Before the audience members came on stage, Derren had asked the whole audience to think of the surname of the first person that they had a crush on. After he had correctly identified the truth-teller, he kept the final "liar" on stage. He suddenly touched and spoke to this young man, who disconcertingly slumped to the floor in a trance-like state. Without the man saying anything, Derren wrote a name on a large card; he then woke the man and asked him to announce the name he had been thinking of. Derren had guessed it correctly.

The show continued in a similar vein, with ever more seemingly amazing predictions, including the grand finale, which I won't spoil but seems impossible. There are also physical feats, which I have touched on above (nice work if you can get it - or not). The really interesting part of the show, for me, was that at the end he revealed how he achieved the grand finale, by showing you a film of clips of the show, pointing out where he was suggesting things to the audience. Fascinating, and very clever.

SUMMARY

There were only a couple of small elements of some of the tricks in the show that didn't quite work on the night, and over all, his performance was staggeringly convincing. The thing that I particularly like though about Derren Brown is that he is not a fraud. He describes his craft as a mixture of magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship, and he is remarkably upfront about the techniques he uses to achieve his aims. You can read more about these on his website, http://www.derrenbrown.co.uk/ or the Channel 4 website, http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/M/mindcontrol/. He clearly dislikes people who claim to be "physic". In fact, much of what he does aims to reproduce the things that physics and spiritualists do - except that he tells you it's a trick.

All in all, Derren Brown comes across as a charming man, who performs some amazing feats in this show - great fun, great entertainment (with a few uncomfortable spots) and well worth seeing.