★★★★
The usual preserve of the contemporary magician, is to showboat, to give razzamatazz and lead the endless misdirection around the tricks they do. Angus Baskerville is singularly different. Rather than give the cliché magician persona, he opts for a much more personal style. Not that Angus isn’t a born entertainer. His skill and craft is detailed and has the audience transfixed with dropped jaws!
Angus builds the show around tricks and ‘mind-reading’ that seem to crop up in the strangest places. Where he can seemingly know the words we’ve picked out of books, or select the only bag that doesn’t have a poisonous liquid. It’s always fun to take part in a trick and be totally shocked with the gasp of ‘how did he do that?’, which happens constantly in Angus’s show.
It was the personal stories that Angus shared which made the show a cut above your average magic show. That magic for him, is a way to cope and regulate. Growing up in South Africa where an autism diagnosis is impossible to get, he found School hard and wasn’t helped. It was coming back to the U.K. as a teenager and finding a passion in magic that Angus could be himself and cut through the disabling restrictions society puts on our communities.
The title of the show is a telling reminder at the way neurodivergent people are categorised as troublemakers, and Angus does a great job of educating, advocating and entertaining – an amazing achievement.
Naughty or Neurodiverse – Magic from Another Planet was on at TheSpace on the Mile.
