[2013062] Morgan & West: Clockwork Miracles
Morgan & West @ The Garden of Unearthly Delights – Le Cascadeur
7:15pm, Tue 26 Feb 2013
I had been really careful about scheduling Morgan & West in this Fringe; after not seeing them last year, I felt like I had to honour my friend Sam’s suggestion this time around. The Clockwork Miracles précis didn’t exactly attract me, but… I was there out of duty. I owed Sam.
But then, about halfway through the show, another act’s name popped into my head… and I realised that Morgan & West weren’t actually who Sam had suggested at all. And that was a double bummer, because I really wasn’t enjoying the show at that point… which meant that, on top of not actually satisfying the debt I felt, I was wasting a perfectly good prime timeslot.
Worse still, I’d first bumped into the self-anointed Time Travelling Magicians as I had scurried through The Garden towards their show; they had attempted to spruik me and, as I flashed my ticket when they expressed cool disbelief at my enthusiastic assurance that I was actually about to see their show, I actually felt like they cold-shouldered me. How odd, I had thought: I’m not even in the venue yet, and the performers have got me off-side.
And whilst their Victorian presentation and schtick is certainly unique, the language and mannerisms become tiresome after awhile; worse, there were few tricks that I hadn’t seen elsewhere in the previous fortnight. Card tricks and sleight-of-hand routines failed to excite, though the interest picked up when the audience was involved: the tricks were (again) familiar, but the panache of the two English gentleman (and, in particular, the handling of their audience marks) provided something worth smiling about.
In the end, though, I was left with the impression that Clockwork Miracles was better suited to a parlour presentation than the wide open spaces of Le Cascadeur… maybe in a tighter space I wouldn’t have felt as detached from the performance. Then again, maybe I just needed a more positive impression of the chaps going into the show…