After ten years of being a big fan of Derren Brown, I got to see him live in New York.
The show was amazing and the absolute mind-blowing thing was...I got to go on stage and be a part of the finale.
Derren requested everyone not to spoil the contents of the show, but of course I wanted to preserve what happened in my own memory. Since I respect him too much to publicly spoil it for anyone who might google this, I've put my full spoilery review in a private document.
In the last few years, I started accepting that I might never get to see him live. His shows are usually in the UK and who knows how long he'll continue to do stage shows.
In July this year, I went to his site and saw that he was doing a new tour in 2020 called Showman. "Derren is back with first brand-new UK theatre show in five years." I looked at the UK tour sites hoping for a Dublin or London. I figured it would be feasible to fly in for a three-day weekend kind of thing. No Dublin or London though, just smaller cities. So I set up a Google Alert for 2020 derren brown tour, hoping that he would add the big cities.
I've been getting lots of alerts for the UK show so I had kinda stopped paying attention to them. And then yesterday I got this:
I almost deleted it without thinking about it, but I made a connection...Broadway. We have a family vacation already scheduled to NYC in October...
Sure enough, Derren has a short run NYC show called Secret. So what did I do?
I bought a ticket on the floor for October 18. In less than a month I'm going to see Derren Brown on Broadway. Expect a full review.
I'm surprised that I haven't written about Derren Brown before. He's a mentalist/magician/etc and I find him and his shows fascinating. I probably discovered him around 2009 and every couple of years I remember him and go watch everything I can on youtube. This is probably the fourth time this has happened.
On youtube you can find a variety of shows.
He has somewhat traditional magic type stage shows. I've watched Something Wicked This Way Comes, An Evening of Wonders, Enigma, Infamous and Svengali. I've yet to see Derren Brown Live. Here are two of my favorites:
"An Evening of Wonders"
"Svengali"
He also has a bunch of edited one-hour TV specials and series. I've seen The Great Art Robbery, The System, The Events, all four of The Experiments, Pushed To The Edge, The Heist, some episodes of Trick of the Mind and Trick or Treat.
Trick of the Mind: Season 2, Episode 1 featuring Simon Pegg
What's interesting about this is he gives you one explanation for how he did it. Or was he just able to use sleight of hand and forge the signature. I don't know.
And there's just a slew of great clips that are pulled from a variety of shows.
Pickpocketing
Paying With Paper
Card Trick
Choosing The Right Door
I've seriously looked at buying tickets to a show in the UK. I'm all in.
