Danish magician Martin Brock cheats at cards – and shows the audience how to do it as part of his Edinburgh Fringe show. We asked him a few questions about his art and his efforts to make magic shows fun for a modern audience.
The tricks are important, but they’re part of something bigger
What’s wrong with the traditional show - surely everyone loves a dinner-suited magician sawing his glamorous assistant in half and pulling rabbits from top hats?
For me it’s the challenge, almost like a game, to put something unique onto the stage. Steve Martin once said that if someone wants to be in entertainment but can’t do anything, they can always do magic. There’s a bit of truth to that. Magic can be the easiest artform because you can literally buy tricks and perform pre-made routines. But if you’re creating everything yourself and trying to do something original, it quickly becomes one of the hardest. I literally write and construct all my routines and tricks from scratch - sometimes this takes years, but I think it pays off in the end.
Magic - with notable exceptions - seems much less popular than in the 1990s and earlier. What happened, and how can it be revived?
Good question. For years, especially through the '90s, magic had a big presence on television - and the whole family would sit down to watch. Now, with social media, attention spans have shortened and magic has been reduced to ten second clips. But live magic still has something special about it - that atmosphere and real-time connection can’t be replicated online. That’s the future of magic, I think. Live shows are hard to replace.
You entertain worldwide - what are audiences looking for in a modern magic show like the one you’re bringing to the Edinburgh Fringe?
The one thing that always cuts through is quality. Style, costume, tone - those can all vary. But if the material is strong, it will always stand out. We have thousands of shows at the Fringe, which really drives me to create something people genuinely haven’t seen before. I’m obsessive with detail. Everything - from the tricks to the props - is something I’ve made from scratch. Even the music this year is original, composed and recorded specifically for the show.
Have TV and films, where the unbelievable is everywhere, made it harder for stage magicians to impress live audiences?
Yes, but that’s also the challenge I love. Onscreen, you can edit things, control the angles, add effects. I try to create things that look and feel like they could only be done with computer-generated imagery, but are happening right in front of you. It’s not always easy, but If I didn’t have to compete with what people see on their phones, I would maybe have taken the shortcut. And now, I get to see and hear reactions I otherwise wouldn’t have. What’s not to love?
How much of a successful modern magic show is about the tricks, and how much about the performer and their rapport with the audience?
Magic is the hook - it gets people through the door. But without story, music, humour and atmosphere the audience lose interest. The tricks are important, but they’re part of something bigger. It’s about the whole experience - taking people somewhere unexpected and giving them something to feel, not just something to figure out.
You take great pride in designing your own tricks - why, and what does it involve?
To me, performing someone else’s routine without reworking it completely or simply creating something original, is like doing karaoke instead of writing your own song. There’s no formula for creating new magic - it often starts with a blank sheet of paper (which, incidentally, is the whole plot of the final routine in the show). Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Occasionally, I spend months on something only to scrap it entirely. But when it does work - when you perform something you’ve spent years developing - it’s the best feeling in the world.
You're an expert in the sleight of hand used by the card cheats of the Wild West - so would it be unwise to play poker with you for money?
There’s a section in the show where I demonstrate some fairly complex card cheating techniques, and actually show how it’s done - stuff that’s incredibly difficult and rarely seen live. But truthfully, I’m a terrible poker player. So yes, feel free to challenge me after the show - if you can get me to play, you’d probably win. However, that’s exactly what a skilled poker player would want you to think...
