Catch Maureen’s column each month for the latest theatre and art happenings...
Maureen Sullivan is a regular contributor to Island Echo’s coverage of the Arts on the Isle of Wight. Maureen has been actively involved in the Island’s amateur dramatics scene for several years, appearing in many different roles and guises with several theatre companies. In her free time, Maureen also writes and reviews at iwtheatre.org.
Part of the magician’s trick is to confuse his audience, and the first confusion of the night, before we even got into the auditorium, was being asked by Felicity, Greg’s wife and – for this show – front of house manager – to pick a numbered envelope, and not open it until told…
The contents proved to be the focus of the first trick of the evening – and there were so many more to come. Reviewing shows like this is always difficult because I don’t want to spoil the surprises in store for future audiences – and the surprises come thick and fast.
Greg himself has a charismatic, friendly stage presence; he manages to be informative, mysterious and extremely funny – along with the laughter and amazement, I actually learned a lot about the subject of the show – dinosaurs. I never knew there was controversy around the statement that dinosaurs are extinct – and if you believe Greg, there is good reason to doubt this as he produced on stage a baby velociraptor and ‘proved’ that dinosaurs are more intelligent than humans… although strict scientific process might require more than one specimen of each species to compete for absolute proof…
As well as sharing the stage with dinosaurs, Greg called up audience members, including some of the younger attendees, and more often than not, those on stage actually witnessing – and being part of – the magic, were as amazed as the rest of us if not more so. Having participated in some Chapman magic tricks in the past, I can confirm that you are left with ‘how on earth did he do that?’ ringing in your brain, and I could see the same astonishment in the stage participants in this show.
There are some stage magicians who appear to simply wish to show off their sleight of hand and how clever they are – Greg however adds more to the performance by often appearing to be unsure, to be about to fail or to be relying on an obvious ‘get-out’, only to reveal that he knew exactly what he was doing all along – leaving his audience applauding in wonder. This apparent fallibility however, along with Greg’s natural, warm, amusing personality and banter, evokes audience sympathy, so as he announces that he has seen this trick done before but he has no idea how it could have been done….while actually performing said trick, draws us in and makes us want him to succeed.
And succeed he does. By the end of the show, I left feeling the evening had sped by, having laughed, gasped, learned and been awestruck. If Greg was in danger of being upstaged by a baby velociraptor – and at times he was – he proved in this show once again that he is a master of his craft, both as a magician and an entertainer.
If you have a chance to see Greg Chapman’s Magic of the Dinosaurs, I highly recommend you do so – and if not, do catch his performances around the Island and on the mainland in various places including our own Steam Railway.
If you want to keep up with what Greg and Felicity are up to, visit their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/GregandFelicityAdventures.
If dinosaurs are your thing too, check out Greg and Felucity’s dinosaur documentary at https://watch.plex.tv/movie/seeking-the-first-dinosaur-hunters.
