Magic is addictive. The more you see, the higher the bar rises, but the itch to be astounded is never scratched. A handful of magicians at the Edinburgh fringe have audiences queueing around the block, but there are more than 100 to take a punt on, in the hope that the next show might be the one to blow you away.
In an unglamorous venue, Andrew Frost’s tricks are not flashy and there are no dramatic lighting changes. But the tricks are phenomenally well controlled. Frost is a former woodwork teacher, and you can envisage him winning over a class of reluctant teenagers. He admits an hour-long show of card tricks isn’t the sexiest draw, but his unserious attitude and impressive sleight of hand easily keep the audience entertained. As soon as you think you might know what or where a certain card is, he is five steps ahead and your certainty disintegrates.
The show’s title, Andrew Frost: The Greatest Card Magician in the World, is tongue-in-cheek, taken from a more hesitantly worded review. Saying the phrase weighs on him nevertheless, Frost determines to offload the crown to one of us instead. The key to a good card trick, Frost tells us, is to capture the hearts of the audience and then to find a satisfying way of finding their selected card. Simple. Deciding he doesn’t quite fit the bill of the heart-stealer, he brings in a volunteer for a dashing finale, letting them, with their nervous excitement, be the one to capture our hearts. Aided by his delighted makeshift assistant, this is a solid hour of intimate, absorbing card magic.
Ava Beaux puts more emphasis on the narrative for her show, wrapping tricks around a whimsical story of witches’ familiars and dual identity. Performed as part of the free fringe, Ava & Beaux: Tales of Magic has moments of impressive mind reading, with a baffling trick based around a hidden squirrel. Flatter sequences rely on a ubiquitous shop-bought trick like metal rings, where the secret doesn’t feel buried deep enough to be worth digging for. The story sometimes trips her up, getting in the way of the magic, and leaving little room for tricks between the tale, but her charm wins over the room.
The standout section in James Phelan’s show, The Man Who Was Magic, is a riveting stuck-in-the-mud drill with one audience member reading the mind of another. Even more fascinating for the fact that it doesn’t work on the first attempt, it’s a glimpse into Phelan’s skill in mentalism, though surprisingly little use is made of this throughout. Phelan frames his show by weaving a slight story about dreaming of performing magic as a kid. With handwritten notes conjuring the idea of manifesting your future, he creates a sweet moment encouraging a nine-year-old from the audience to do the same.
The rest of the show doesn’t live up to the standard expected from the award-winning magician who predicted the lottery. The show doesn’t stretch into the enormous space of McEwan Hall, with the audience in the circle largely ignored. He needs a camera for the more fiddly sections in such a large theatre, while some parts of the show feel as if they are still being road-tested.
Phelan is a genial performer and deftly handles the trickier customers in the crowd, but something about this show feels blase, missing much of the buildup that comes before the release. With a predictable finale about prediction, the setup is fumbled this afternoon, robbing the trick of some of its power to thrill. For such an acclaimed magician, this show aches for more invention.
Then we come to the queue that doesn’t just go around the theatre but out of the square, over the road and into a car park. Ben Hart is a fringe favourite for a reason. It is common sense that a magician will only touch an object on stage when they are up to something, because every trick seems more impossible when even the idea of the magician’s interference is hard to comprehend. Hart quickly dispels any cynics by letting us be the ones who touch, hold and shuffle. “Look at my hands,” he reminds us. “Watch my sleeves.” Overhearing someone doubting that he put an important object into an important bag, he does the action again, this time standing back and letting an audience member do the honours.
The Remarkable Ben Hart presents a “best of” compilation with sleight of hand, mentalism, card magic and other harder-to-categorise tricks. Hart gives us plenty of showmanship but doesn’t waste much time inventing a story to neatly tie everything together, preferring to leap straight in with what we’re all here to see. With his personable, waggish manner, a few of Hart’s tricks are almost casually jaw-dropping. He acts surprised when something entirely and definitely solid disappears right in front of our eyes. “Do you know,” he says, with a little smirk of delight at our gasps, “I have no idea how that works.” A few of his setups are less spectacularly weighty than others, but the sense of wonder never wavers.
In the extravagant Palais du Variété, Hart’s production has an old-world charm, particularly as a mighty storm threatens to rip the tent away during the performance. “The spirits are with us,” Hart jokes as the tent billows. You get the sense the audience would be happy if the storm kept us stuck in here all night.
• Andrew Frost: The Greatest Card Magician in the World is at 10 Dome at Pleasance Dome until 25 August; Ava & Beaux: Tales of Magic is at Speakeasy at PBH’s Free Fringe @ Voodoo Rooms until 24 August; James Phelan: The Man Who Was Magic is at McEwan Hall at Underbelly, Bristo Square, until 13 August, then touring the UK until March 2026; The Remarkable Ben Hart is at Palais du Variété at Assembly George Square Gardens until 24 August, then touring the UK until April 2026.
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