Champions of Magic, a United Kingdom-based group of illusionists, made a pit-stop in Bloomington as part of their new touring show “Chasing the Unbelievable” on Tuesday night at the IU Auditorium. The nearly sold-out show featured four magicians performing different kinds of magic.
The group started performing in the UK in October 2013 at the Reading Hexagon Theatre and quickly garnered success before taking their show to the United States in 2017-18. The band of magicians is comprised of Liberty Larsen, a fourth-generation Larsen family magician, Fernando Velasco, a Mexican American escapologist, and British comedy magic duo Richard Young and Sam Strange, known collectively as Young & Strange.
Larsen descends from a renowned family of magicians whose performances date back to World War 2. The Larsen family carved their influence on the world of magic, having created the Magic Castle private club in Los Angeles, founded the Genii Magazine and established the Academy of Magical Arts.
Velasco learned the tricks of the trade at 11 years old thanks to his father’s job at the Magic Castle. He quickly burgeoned into an acclaimed escapologist. In 2017, he became the youngest person in the world to present their version of Houdini’s Water Torture Cell.
Young & Strange began their journey into illusionism as childhood friends at 7 years old, sharing a fascination with all things magic. They started out as rivals with nearly identical styles of illusions in their hometown Oxford, England, until they put on their debut show together in 2010. Since then, they’ve continued to evolve their Las Vegas-style magic.
The show began promptly at 7:30 p.m. with the four magicians introducing themselves. The two-hour performance featured flashing lights, pyrotechnic effects and an overhead television screen for close-ups and storytelling.
The show’s headlining magicians, Young & Strange, kicked it off by sharing the clip that propelled them to viral fame by ostensibly videobombing a Sky News TV broadcast with their “shrinking man” illusion — which they then demonstrated on stage.
The magicians followed each other’s individual acts and heavily involved audience members in their illusions, often walking among the seated crowd. For one such iteration, the group even called on an audience member to host a mock version of “The Tonight Show.”
In one of her acts, Larsen asked a front-row member, Aeron Taylor, to think of an exotic animal as she wrote it down on a chalk board. She then astonished the crowd by accurately revealing his choice — a cobra.
“We were just talking about (Larsen’s trick) on the way out,” Taylor said during the intermission. “We still couldn’t figure out how she got my animal.”
Velasco announced he would perform Houdini’s iconic handcuff trick, only for Young & Strange to comically interrupt him. They bound him with shrink wrap and covered him with a box under a giant cloth. The intermission commenced shortly after Velasco broke out of the trap in the blink of an eye to reveal Young shrink-wrapped in his place and Strange bound by the cuffs instead.
Taylor’s 10-year-old son, Cas, was later invited to the stage for one of Young & Strange’s acts.
“I think the show is really cool and funny, but I kind of figured out how (the trick) was done,” he said, going on to confidently share his theory of Young & Strange’s illusion, in which an audience member selected a random puzzle piece that turned out to be the exact missing piece from the concealed puzzle on stage.
In the second half, a group act shortly after surrounded a suspended box of money of over $45000, which Strange joked was “Pamela Whitten’s hourly salary,” eliciting an uproarious laugh from the audience.
The following acts featured each individual’s humble beginnings told through magic.
Young & Strange’s double act was an emulation of their own personas, calling upon two children from the audience to be the “next Young & Strange.” They performed their own disappearing act on stage. By the end of it, the audience was spellbound to see “Strange Jr.” mysteriously reappear in the middle of the crowd.
Larsen's solo act shifted the tempo and introduced a slow, poignant narrative amid the rather flashy ones. She told the audience stories about her childhood growing up in a magician family. She recalled her joy in discovering a box that would flip a ball into a cup whenever she covered the lid.
Velasco recounted his parents' journey immigrating to the U.S., and he reflected on how their courage inspired him to embrace risks in his own life — all while threading a needle in his mouth. He followed it up with a death-defying stunt in which he escaped from a straitjacket while suspended upside-down and avoided getting crushed by a set of steel jaws in the nick of time.
The grand finale was inspired by legendary Las Vegas magicians Siegfried & Roy, the Strip’s highest-paid magicians ever, whose acts often involved tigers — only in this case, it was Velasco in a tiger costume.
The finale was acted in four stunning parts, including a buzz saw cutting through one of the assistants in a box, vanishing and body-swapping acts, pyrotechnics and at one point, Strange hanging from a disco ball.
A giant confetti cannon erupted onto the front rows to signal the end of the show as the magicians thanked the audience and took their leave by vanishing in a box for their final trick.
“Those were some of the most mind-blowing spectacles I’ve ever seen in my life,” Heather Green, an IU student and audience member, said. “I couldn’t even begin to tell you how they even did like, one trick.”
