David Haig’s new play concerns the perhaps unlikely but definitely true story of the friendship and association between the brains behind Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and showman and trickster extraordinaire, Harry Houdini. Conan Doyle wasn’t a brilliant escapologist, and Houdini couldn’t write a detective story for toffee, but they did have a shared interest in the world of Spiritualism.
Having lost his son Kingsley shortly after the end of the First World War, Conan Doyle spent the subsequent years desperately believing that he could stay in contact with him through the services of a medium – the renowned Mina Crandon. Houdini, who knew everything about creating illusion, desperately wanted to believe in Spiritualism and would have loved for seances to be true; but he was always able to disprove them. It’s the balance between Conan Doyle, the ultimate believer, and Houdini, the ultimate deceiver, that’s at the heart of the play.
There’s undoubtedly a good story to be told here, but sadly Magic isn’t it. It has a strangely empty feel, as though it knows it doesn’t have much to tell us, and to compensate, what it does tell us is delivered at a snail’s pace. The production allows itself to be sidetracked by enormous amounts of padding, varying from unnecessary musical interludes, Houdini doing a few tricks, and the slowest scene changes this side of the A27. There’s only one scene which contains any drama or tension – which is where Houdini exposes Mina Crandon (an excellently vitriolic Jade Williams) as a fraud, leaving Conan Doyle devastated as he realises he has been tricked. Whilst the characterisations are thoroughly believable, and the acting is first rate, the play and staging are so heavy going and ponderous that they drag the story down with it. And whilst Haig has a nice understanding of the warp and weft of conversation, the text feels like it would be better read than acted.
The music-hall setting unbalances the show by presenting it wholly from the perspective of Houdini’s world, with nothing at all from the Conan Doyle world; and whilst the members of the musical ensemble perform well, they simply distract from the main thrust of the play. In fact, this would be far better as a four or five-hander (the Conan Doyles, the Houdinis and Mina) in a more intimate setting and with greater intensity of dialogue.
David Haig plays Conan Doyle with Edwardian dignity and propriety, and a gentle sense of humour. He embodies respectability in contrast with Hadley Fraser’s Houdini, who accentuates the brash American-ness and essential shallowness of his profession. This difference continues with the enjoyably contrasting Claire Price as the very correct but repressed Jean Conan Doyle and Jenna Augen as the friendly and content Bess Houdini. There’s a brief scene where Bess reveals how Jean turned away from musical performance herself in order to be the literary wife, and we get a glimpse of the sacrifices Jean has made for the greater good – there’s an intriguing dynamic here which is annoyingly just left dangling.
Whilst the play does attempt to explore the lengths to which one can go to come to terms with grief and loss, it never truly fulfils its potential, and the distracting and cumbersome production doesn’t help.
Three-sy Does It!