Image: www.magicsteven.net
When you see a performer get up on stage and recount the deeply personal details of their life, there is a tendency to take it for granted that doing so is easy. You laugh at the stories that touch something that you have struggled to share or put into words. But when the house lights come on at the end of the show you’re secretly thankful that it’s someone else who has been doing the sharing. It’s this feeling that draws you into Magic Steven’s stories of weddings, coffee culture, travel, love and many a strange tangent along the way.
He’s part Steven Wright, part Dimitri Martin in the way he lays bare his idiosyncrasies and attempts at self-understanding to share with the audience his detail-obsessed stream of consciousness. With this unique point of view he takes such seemingly banal topics as the trays of juice and water brought around by flight attendants on long-haul flights and reveals the silliness and humour that only the over-analytical mind can.
Yet the matter-of-factness of his deadpan delivery makes the audience feel like the strange one for not noticing all these tiny details and it’s this authenticity that makes you laugh. Sometimes even when you’re not sure why. The constant deadpan does make the show drag a bit in the middle but overall the show builds well and finishes strongly.
Steven’s style also allows him to talk very openly about topics like love without any hint of awkwardness, inviting the audience to laugh freely with him even as he shares things that most of us would be afraid to say out loud let alone on stage in front of a room full of strangers. His stories of being in therapy are brilliant as is the way he’s able to look at his diagnosis as he reads an excerpt from it verbatim on stage.
This is not your typical comedy show that will have you rolling in the aisles while the person on stage rants and prances around the stage reeling off dick jokes and one liners. It’s a brave performance that invites you to laugh at the peculiar inner world that we so rarely get to see. Steven stays true to that inner world as he jumps abruptly from one topic to another or wanders off on a tangent, but the way he always manages to tie all these seemingly disparate stories neatly together by the end of the show, is truly impressive. At different times the show is hilarious, frustrating and wonderfully weird but who could claim that an honest expression of our inner workings could be presented any other way.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Magic Steven’s World of Feelings
RMIT Kaleide Theatre
2 – 9 April, 2015
