The Sound Suite Cocoon: A Evening Of Wonders With Derren Brown

On a hot and sticky Thursday night, I dragged myself from a hard day’s work over to the delights of one of Surrey’s most extraordinary church hall’s to see the man they call an illusion trickster from darkest Victoriana - Derren Brown.

As a thousand people rushing into the cramped theatre straight from work or dropping the children off at the baby sitters, found their seats, a rumour in surround sound filled the air with excitement. As many of us would not put it passed him, we found ourselves staring around the corners of the room for hidden cameras and twitching curtains. After previously reading somewhere that he picks out his victims from watching them enter the auditorium from some secret location, it meant that if Mr Brown had been peeking from off stage, he would have seen a few hundred people squinting al around as if they have lost something.

The show began in the most traditional fashion. A projector from the back casting great words onto a screen on stage which said calming things such as ‘Hello,’ and ‘Follow The Instructions Carefully.’ In silent movie style, we are entertained by him even though we haven’t seen him yet. We are told by the Big Brother screen to watch a piece of film of two people playing table tennis. At first, it suddenly feels like a University lecture - the ones which we bother to turn up for, because we think they’ll be easy. We find ourselves caught out by one of Derren’s little visual games, little did we know on first viewing of the film that the two players in black in the foreground were actually a pair of gorillas - anyone could have made that mistake…

The rest of the show consisted of, as he would put it - ‘A Evening of Wonders.’ There were, before the show, a disturbing number of young student types loitering around in the foyer. For a moment, I felt, at the ripe of age of 35, very old. Yet it occurred to me, that this section of Derren followers were hoping to catch Brown at his gory worst. I wonder later, if these kids had walked away feeling somewhat disappointed, when the entire evening was spent mind reading. There must have been at least one spotty youth in the crowd who was aching to hear Derren say, "And now I shall re-enact a scene from 'Misery' Satrring Kathy Bates, I shall attempt to hack someone's legs off with a blunt instrument. I'll just throw the Frisbee out into the audience to chose one of you, why are you all ducking?"

I was relieved to see a whole new take on his ‘act.’ He would hate me for saying that word, yet what we saw was actually the re-enactment of his career’s birth. He gave us, although it may have fallen on a number of deaf ears, a small insight to where his certain techniques originate. Flashes of Victorian looking men in stiff black and white poses light up the screen behind him. We see the 36 year old Derren, a man of 2007, dressed in the same bib and tucker and sporting similar pointed beards. What I personally delight in, is his ability to talk with great respect for these past illusionists and charlatans, yet in the same breath, present them as frauds. Brown, himself believes in nothing and continuously presents himself as an equal trickster, but here comes the real trick - he is the genuine article, or at least, so he would have us believe.

He is a showman, and one of a breed who is not just dying, but has long since been dead since the first World War. He comes to us in almost an apparition of someone who is not of our time. He has, swamped himself in such mysteries of the past that we either want to swim into the dark, deathly depths of the Victorian swamp with him, or tell him he needs to get out more. For me, I am far from the latter. Yet there is a trick in him, and a very clever one at that. At the end of the first half of the show, he invites 150 of us to collect a black envelope each from a smiling usherette and write on the card inside, a question, then walk onto the stage, place it in a bowl, where, in the second half, he will randomly pull out an envelope and then proceed to tell the writer what the question is inside and give it an answer without opening it.

Of course, if anyone who was there might have noticed, is that he didn’t actually give any answer, nor did he say the actual question, yet as each card came out (and mine didn’t, tutt!) he would then begin to tell the person the ailments they suffered with and when they were going on holiday this year. I have found that his entertainment technique on stage is actually quite simple for the full effect - he starts a trick, it goes wrong, you figure out what it is he is trying to achieve and just as he is about to give up, he turns the trick around and presents us with a result and we had;

a) not bargained for, and

b) left us just about as speechless as the coach of Taunton Athletic who has just seen his team score the winning goal over AC Milan.

(I wish I could have come up with another simile on that last point there.) Yet we are enthralled at him, and find ourselves falling under his entrancing spell further still so that when he comes to do the next, not-so-fancy trick, we muse even more, not that the trick was any good but we are lavishing in the great idea it was to buy a ticket.

Sparklingly handsome tinged with equal self absorption, Mr Brown will keep you nattering about how you thought he could know the total number was of a random number of people in the audience thinking up a group of numbers each. Only he knows how it is done and if you think buying his new book, ’Tricks Of The Mind,’ is going to tell you anything, you are very much mistaken.

We are, after all, the nation who invented entertainment in it’s wondrous form. We used to gather in the village square to watch people chained to the whipping post and others being hung for their crimes, so should we be that shocked that the Victorians aren’t that far behind us still? Just look over your shoulder the next time you by a ticket to see him (and you know you will) and you will find a whole host of ghostly figures straight out of the Old Time Music Hall, flying their little Union Jacks.

I kid ye not!

Find out more dates in his 2007 tour at http://www.derrenbrown.co.uk/tour
His next performance after Dorking again tonight is; 31st: Glasgow, Royal Concert Hall (0141 353 8000)

Also take a look at - http://soundsuite.blogspot.com/2007/03/inside-box-with-thinking-womans-crumpet.html

© m.duffy (Planet Janet) 2007