Hailing from Switzerland, Tom Lauri (and his fingers) is attending to all our magic needs at the Sweet Grassmarket with his deadpan offering of comedy/cabaret magic.
This is old-school magic with an attempt at a modern twist. All the tricks are classics that we’ve all seen before, many times over, mainly at children’s birthday parties. There is nothing wrong with this and our impresario delivers the majority of them with pure ease and affection, and only the odd fumbling moment.
The whole concept of the show is a great idea and at times I did journey back to those parties and couldn’t help feel a sense of nostalgia, especially when the children in the audience gave out the odd gasp of excitement.
What didn’t seem to work, though was Tom Lauri’s attempt at presenting the majority of the tricks with a back-story or theme. Most of them didn’t make sense and weren’t needed. If a simpler route were taken with the magic tricks instead of an attached story I would have been hooked.
Every so often a gem of a moment would raise its head only to scurry away as soon as it appeared mainly due to Lauri’s un-comfortableness.
This magician clearly knows his magic and he excels and comes alive when he is interacting with his audience and involves them in his show. This is where I feel the success may lie in his future. Tom Lauri builds up a strong and lovable rapport with his audience and it’s enjoyably entertaining. The unsuspecting folk jump onboard and don’t seem to want to get off.
Good with his fingers he is, but that’s about it.
