Look out Paul Daniels, avert your hypno-eyes Mr Piffles, for Barry and Stuart are back to bring their dark magic tricks to the Edinburgh crowds and this time they are going to show you just how they do it. With blatant disregard to the magician’s code, Barry and Stuart are going to perform two shows tonight, one “The Show”, a gloriously inventive hour of entertainment and, a little later, you have the option of returning for “the tell”, an in-depth blow by blow account of how every single trick is done. It’s one hell of a gimmick and with magic like this you simply have to return to find out how on Earth they pull it off.
The show itself is as playfully macabre as ever, as blood trickles down their back after sitting on a nail bed, they really have created a suspenseful hour of magic where you aren’t sure just what will happen next.
Barry Jones and Stuart Macleod are brilliant front men, funny and charming yet managing to keep the illusion of danger at the forefront of the audiences mind. But it’s the involvement of modern technology that makes them stand head and shoulders above the rest. They encourage the crowd to go to Twitter and Facebook during the show to aid them in tricks and have a genius use of 3D glasses, were wearing them will, quite literally, make the world Rose-tinted, allowing the coloured powerpoint in the background to show how the trick is done.
It is clever stuff but it does seem a little odd to reveal the tricks during “The Show” and then later in more detail with “The Tell”. However those who choose not to return for the second portion really will miss out. For the “The Tell” is an excellent show in itself, combining new tricks with detailed reveals that really show the huge and impressive knowledge they have for magic.
A thoroughly entertaining, blisteringly energetic show that manages to shock and thrill even at the cost of the mystique.
4/5 
Martin Miller
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