Now You See Me Live! unfolds on a spectacular scale in the London Coliseum, a theatre with more than 2,000 seats, but it never loses sight of the simple appeal of magic itself.
For children who spend their school holidays glued to screens, this is a show I would recommend. With the feeling that another trick might happen in the time it takes to blink, it is difficult to take your eyes off the stage even for a moment.
We see countless images on screens every day. Beyond CGI, we now live in an age when AI can create people, places and events that do not exist within seconds. Seeing someone fly or disappear on a screen is no longer surprising. But what happens when a real person, standing just a few steps away, produces cards from their fingertips, or someone who was there only a moment ago suddenly disappears before your eyes? That is the simple thrill at the heart of Now You See Me Live! at the London Coliseum.
On the way into the auditorium, after having their tickets checked, audience members are asked to choose four cards from a box in the corridor. With no idea what they will be used for, we carry them into the theatre. At the end of Act One, those cards become part of a trick that fills the London Coliseum with gasps and cheers. I shuffle the cards myself, throw them into the air and mix them with those of the people around me. Then something happens that I simply cannot explain. This is wonder that I can actually hold in my hands.
From the beginning, the show actively draws the audience in. The auditorium is often lit up, and cameras turn towards the audience. Mind reader Matthew Pomeroy gathers words from people who catch paper planes thrown into the crowd and numbers from audience members holding balloons, turning them into seemingly impossible predictions. Personal objects handed over from the seats return as part of a magic trick. Some audience members are even invited onto the stage to become part of the magic themselves.
Inspired by the 2013 film of the same name, the show brings the world of Now You See Me to the stage on a spectacular scale. It does not follow the film’s story, but borrows the idea of the ‘Four Horsemen’, bringing together magicians with different specialities as a team. While the film uses editing and visual effects to make the impossible happen, the stage show turns it into something that happens live, right in front of the audience.
Executive producer and co-creator Simon Painter began his career as a magician. Together with executive producer Tim Lawson, he created the internationally successful magic show The Illusionists. The pair are experienced in bringing performers with different skills together and turning their individual acts into a large-scale spectacle. Now You See Me Live! follows a similar approach. Escape acts and manipulation sit alongside large-scale illusions, in which people and objects appear or disappear, and mentalism, in which performers seem to read or predict thoughts. The acts follow one another at a fast pace, with striking video, lighting, music and bursts of fire.
Eden Choi. Photo: Johan Persson
In a magic show, even the entrances and exits are magic. Performers suddenly disappear, only to appear again somewhere unexpected. The show’s only female magician, Gabriella Lester, emerges from the audience, changes costumes in an instant, and then vanishes without a trace. Moments later, a helicopter appears where she had been standing. Lester later takes on a more dangerous escape act, stepping into a small metal box fitted with explosives as her arms and the entire box are secured with chains and a padlock. On screen, a digital clock counts the minutes, seconds, and even milliseconds, the numbers racing upward and heightening the tension. With the countdown and urgent music, the audience knows everything has been carefully planned, yet still holds its breath, fearing something might go wrong.
Italian escape artist Andrew Basso pushes that tension even further. In his underwater escape in Act Two, his ankles are locked in chains and a padlock before he is suspended upside down above a tank of water. As he moves closer to the water, the tense music suddenly stops. The vast London Coliseum falls silent, leaving only the sound of his breathing. Before beginning, Basso asked the audience to try holding their breath with him, but I gave up halfway through. Underwater and still restrained, he struggles to free himself. One minute feels incredibly long. As the milliseconds race by on the screen, Basso frees his ankles, breaks through the padlocks around the tank and finally surfaces, taking a long-awaited breath. As Basso finally takes a breath, the audience breathes a collective sigh of relief.
James More’s teleportation tricks are equally hard to believe. A light bulb and a paper bag move from one place to another in an instant, before More himself seems to disappear and reappear across the stage. In Act Two, Lester climbs into a narrow box and large blades are pushed through it until the centre appears completely empty. Yet moments later, she walks out unharmed. Is it a mirror? Has she somehow folded her body into an impossible position? Is it a camera trick? Or does she have a twin sister? The harder you try to find an answer, the less you seem to understand.
Now You See Me Live! unfolds on a spectacular scale in the London Coliseum, a theatre with more than 2,000 seats, but it never loses sight of the simple appeal of magic itself. One performer who makes a strong impression despite appearing only briefly in Act One is Korean manipulation artist Eden Choi. He became known to British audiences through Britain’s Got Talent, but had already proved his skill by taking second place in the Manipulation category at the 2022 FISM World Championship. His speciality is making small objects such as cards, balls and coins appear and disappear with his hands.
For his act, the auditorium goes dark, and the vast stage disappears into darkness. Only Choi remains brightly lit, drawing every eye towards him. Moving precisely with the music and lighting, he produces an endless stream of cards from his fingertips, seemingly from nowhere. Without a large set or elaborate equipment, he holds the attention of the entire theatre with little more than his body, his hands, and a few small objects.
Magic is hardly a new form of entertainment. Long before film, television, or smartphones, people were amazed and entertained by performers making the impossible appear to happen before their eyes. Yet, in the age of digital technology and AI, this old form of entertainment somehow feels even more vivid. I heard the magician breathing. I saw someone standing in front of me and then watched him disappear.
Instead of keeping the impossible on a screen, Now You See Me Live! puts it into the audience’s hands. At the end of Act One, the four magicians ask us to take out the cards we were given on our way into the theatre. Following their instructions, we shuffle them, place one card into the middle of the pack, throw them into the air, and exchange cards with the person next to us. Then something remarkable happens, as if the audience itself has performed the trick. These are the cards I chose and shuffled myself, and now something I cannot explain has happened to the cards still in my own hands. Around me, people stare blankly at one another in disbelief before breaking into gasps and cheers. For a moment, the magic is no longer happening on stage. It is happening in our own hands.
Next to me, a middle-aged man had come with his elderly father. The two seriously discussed how the tricks might have been done, yet at other moments they simply enjoyed the show like children. As soon as the interval began, a teenager in the row in front was busy messaging friends about the incredible things he had just seen. Elsewhere, an audience member covered her face in fear during one of the escape acts, then applauded with relief when the magician finally made it out.
At the end, videos of the magicians as children appear on the screen. They are reminders that these performers did not reach such spectacular stages overnight, but had dreamed of becoming magicians from a very young age. And in the auditorium, another generation of children watched them with shining eyes.
Now You See Me Live! is playing at London Coliseum until September 6.
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