Review: Mark Guest: Believe, Calder Bookshop Theatre

I saw Derren Brown recently on the tour of his latest mind control extravaganza. From the back row of the gallery in a cavernous Victorian theatre, the seasoned head-mangler was a distant but remarkable presence in a show every bit as lavish and accomplished as you’d expect.

Mainstream success inevitably means ever larger and more lucrative venues and budgets to stage increasingly elaborate stunts. But I was struck by the fact that what I most enjoyed about Derren’s show was the intimate moments between him and audience volunteers when he seemed able to miraculously see into their minds and read the inner mysteries of their thoughts. The extraction of those personal thoughts always wows me more than anything else.

At the tiny but gorgeous Calder Theatre opposite the Young Vic, I sat in an audience probably smaller than the row I sat in for Derren’s show. However, the intimacy of the setting added immensely to the satisfaction of the experience.

A lithe figure with a shaven head and magician’s regulation waistcoat, Mark Guest immediately comes across as a likeable character. He’s avowedly thrilled to be having a press night for his act, and touchingly dedicates the evening to his late friend Luke, who lost his life to cancer. The evening is also a fundraiser for Guy’s Cancer Charity.

Guest’s first routine sees him invite five audience members to think of various things based on random memory prompts. All are then correctly divined by Guest, including one guy he at first struggles to read. Or does he? Perhaps it’s the old ruse of pretending things are going wrong in order to manufacture some extra jeopardy? Frankly, I don’t care – it works very well indeed, and establishes Guest as an artist who knows his tricks.

All the routines are similarly intimate. They’re straightforward variations on the “How did he do that?!” theme, but it has to be said, they yield astonishing results. A long number generated at random from multiple audience members was revealed to have a pinpoint accurate significance, which left the whole room gasping.

Later, a volunteer’s dream holiday (with Chris Hemsworth in Mauritius costing £80k – factors again drawn from audience suggestions) turned out in filmed evidence to have been predicted yesterday, and in the brilliant finale a stranger phoned out of the blue named a playing card picked by an audience member. Each trick was greeted with deservedly rapturous applause and OMGs from a crowd who were clearly having a whale of a time watching Guest achieve the seemingly impossible time after time.

Mark Guest’s act may not be super slick or complex, but it is hugely entertaining. I’d see him again in a room of any size.

Devised by Mark Guest

Mark Guest: Believe has completed its performance at the Calder Bookshop but returns at the
Phoenix Arts Club on Monday 22 and Monday 29 September