More Brown Magic | 'Infamous'

Derren Brown always warns his live audiences to keep details of the show a secret, which makes them difficult to talk or write about without spoiling them, since it's the juicy bits that are the most discussable. So, if anyone reading this (if anyone is actually reading this, then many thanks) intends to watch Infamous, then it's best not to read ahead.

Prior to attending Infamous at Norwich Theatre Royal, I was told by a friend who had been to an earlier performance that one lady had to be ushered out during a particularly intense part of the show involving hypnotism, having felt as if her whole body had tensed up. During the interval, Brown apparently had to come to see her and work his magic upon her to undo the negative effects.

This story played on my mind in the day or so leading up to watching Infamous - the title given an extra edge with my foreknowledge of what happened to the woman. Would Brown be secretly trying to hypnotize us all during the show, with only those more suggestible types (possibly including me) becoming really affected by it? Would I end up as stiff as a board and have to be carried out of the auditorium like a frightened mannequin by a handful of ushers? Or maybe my superego would give way to my id - my inner demons unleashed upon unsuspecting people after the show?

In an effort to gain mental mastery over these worrisome thoughts, I once again turned to the section on Hypnosis and Suggestibility in Brown's book, Tricks of the Mind; repeating a helpful sentence over and over again to myself...'His (the subject's) belief is everything. There is only his belief.' Derren Brown could only affect my mind and actions as far as I believed he could. Given that he makes clear in his book that a trance state is not real, it was highly unlikely I would find myself in a similar scenario to the woman. That said, perhaps Brown had something more edgy up his sleeve than we had seen before?

So, once at the theatre, my friend and I rushed to our seats and waited on the edge of them as the lights went down. The announcer was greeted with nervous laughter as he told everybody that, if we felt woozy or uncomfortable at any time during the performance, we were to look away for a few seconds and we would be fine. This only heightened my trepidation, before he finally said, 'Ladies and gentlemen...Derren Brown!' Rapturous applause.

We were then exposed to our host sat on a simple wooden chair in the middle of a set that was more stripped down than the usual, more extravagant ones in previous stage shows like Enigma.  Derren Brown's head was bowed, as if in deep thought. Eventually, he spoke. 'We are all trapped inside our own heads,' he told us, 'our beliefs and understandings about the world are limited by that perspective.'

His following small talk helped me relax, before he settled into the show proper. Most of it was made up of the kind of tricks we'd all seen him do in previous stage or TV shows, although obviously with different people, repartee and results. Applauding and laughing with everyone else, I still felt sceptical about Brown's usual insistence that he did not use stooges in the show, particularly during one gag that would not have worked, had a certain combination of people not been in attendance. Then again, I'm sure that Brown, familiar as he is with probability and the law of averages, would know that there is always likely to be at least one of the kind of people that he needs for a particular trick to work at every show. Had there not been, it wouldn't have hurt the show to cut this bit out.

Then came the part of the performance where I guessed the tensed-up woman had had to be removed. Brown asked everyone to take part in an extravagant procedure involving all of us who wished to. I had to remind myself - there is only my belief, there is only my belief... Like a wuss, I opted out. Once he had finished this trick, I exhaled. Some more engaging wierdness happened before Brown announced the interval and an invite for anyone interested in psychic mediumship to come up to the stage to watch him at work in Act II.

My companion and I opted to go up, hoping for a closer glimpse into Derren's world than most people get, thinking we were to congragate near the stage to watch whatever Brown did during the interval. Instead, we were ushered onto the stage itself and made to wait until the second act started for our host's return. We sat right in front of the set, facing out into the main auditorium. Nervous about what the next act held, we tried to reassure each other that, whatever lay in store in the second half was as much a trick of our minds as was everything we had witnessed thus far. Surely we would not be hypnotized into getting naked onstage or into believing we were possessed by ghosts, for example? Not unless we wanted to, we reasoned...if hypnotism if all about the power of suggestion, then it was a concern that nudity and possession were on our minds. Were we to fall under Derren's spell, at least one of these things would probably occur.

When Brown came onstage, the reason for our being there with him was revealed - to give a different perspective on the whole show. The idea being that, as in life, we can see things afresh if we only look at them from a different angle. In this case, however, all we saw were various props and stage signs, normally hidden from the main audience's view, who themselves were now in plain sight and it was quite breathtaking to see all those people. I felt like I was being watched, when, in fact, they were all probably oblivious to me, amongst the other audience members onstage. During my time onstage, I was still none the wiser regarding the workings of Brown's tricks, even though they were being done only a few feet away from me and that I had seen him do at least one of them (albeit a little differently) on TV.

Up this close, I could see there was no way that the other audience members around me could have been stooges, as they were, like myself, randomly selected, unless they were actors chosen way in advance and Brown memorized their names, faces and whatever other details were necessary. To do this for an entire tour would surely be impossible without someone revealing anything, not to mention a hell of a lot of work for the production team, just to convince us of Brown's abilities. If this were true, he would not likely allow lots of people to get onstage with him and watch him work. Seeing the show from this angle was exciting but, unlike (spoiler alert!) finding an old man behind the curtain at the end of The Wizard of Oz, it served only to deepen the mystery. A mystery wrapped inside a riddle, hidden within an enigma.

Despite this, more was revealed to me than was intended, when I looked behind me to see that the bottom half of the set had fallen back slightly, allowing me a glimpse behind the stage. Rather than some X-Men-style telepathy-enhancing apparatus, I saw a more prosaic Apple Mac laptop, a desk and some lights. I also heard someone tapping on the other side of the large painted wooden section and wondered if whomever it was might be sending signals to Brown onstage, or that it could be the theatre's resident ghost (that was about to possess me). It was probably just someone trying to figure out why the part of the stage had been dislodged.

The reason for the show's title was not as apparent as those of Brown's previous stage shows. As far as I could tell, Infamous referred to his reputation, which he touched on during one card trick, telling us about having been banned from casinos for using his magic skills to win games. This show was all about perception, being 'trapped inside our own heads' as our host had put it. In Brown's case, he was still affected by taunts from his schooldays. He has admitted in his book that he got into magic as a way of impressing others and gaining their approval. Although he has done very well out of it and that his output has gone beyond playing tricks and into exposing charlatans and spreading positive messages, I did wonder if, at forty-two, he should really get over it but this was, I suppose, Infamous' message - to be happy with who you are. This gave the show a different, more personal aspect than Brown's other live shows, as well as creating a springboard for particular stunts and a couple of laughs.

I left Infamous laughing at the trick my own mind had played on me with my concerns about the effects of hypnotism in the show and, thankfully, still in full control of mind, body and soul. Even if the show did not entertain me as much as previous Derren Brown experiences, I was at least more aware that the ideas and beliefs I myself create have the potential to be better or worse than whatever else anyone could suggest.

Image credit: http://www.atgtickets.com/shows/derren-brown/edinburgh-playhouse/