REVIEW: Chichester Festival Theatre reveals why the creator of Sherlock Holmes turned to spiritual mediums to contact his dead son
‘Magic’ at Chichester Festival Theatre is David Haig’s new play which explores the friendship between Sherlock Holmes’ creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the legendary escapologist Harry Houdini and their clash of views on the reality or otherwise of spiritualism and speaking to lost loved ones from beyond the grave. Gary Shipton was in the audience to give his verdict.
One is instantly reminded of David Haig’s masterpiece My Boy Jack which chronicles another great author Rudyard Kipling and his guilt at using his influence to get his son Jack commissioned in the First World War with tragic consequences.
There are striking parallels with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle whose son Kingsley died in 1918 during the Spanish Flu epidemic following severe wounding in the same war.
Sir Arthur and his wife searched for solace in different ways from Kipling. According to this production, they sought reassurance via a spiritual medium that their son was happy in the next life. As a result, Sir Arthur became a high profile proponent of spiritualism.
He was not alone in this. Such was the grim death toll in the war that many other bereaved parents hoped for similar confirmation.
Houdini’s interest in the subject was just as intense but as a professional magician he viewed the subject through the other end of the glass – demanding incontrovertible proof and unmasking anyone he considered a fraud.
‘Magic’ examines the friendship between Houdini and Sir Arthur – and their wives – and the arguments on both sides of the spiritualist debate.
Great performances all round not least from Haig as Doyle and Hadley Fraser as Houdini. The wives played by Jenna Augen and Claire Price – bring a lightness of touch to an otherwise heavy discourse.
Unlike My Boy Jack which focuses primarily on the intense sense of loss of a son and the ensuring emotional trauma, this is more concerned with the debate and interface between the two men set against Houdini’s showbiz lifestyle.
Only at the end, with his face pressed against the wall through which Houdini has just ‘walked’ do we quite get the full sense of Sir Arthur’s pain.
This is a worthy production packed with lesser known facts about the great Holmes and Watson creator. Perhaps the Minerva would have better hosted it – as it did Haig’s triumph Pressure – enabling a more intense intimacy to be revealed.
None the less, to quote Queen, there is a Kind of Magic about ‘Magic’ even if more cerebral than emotional.