Where he works
Corporate magician in London
London has an award-dinner season and its guests sit through most of it. The room is not hostile, it is experienced, and it has watched a lot of entertainment it did not need.
The room
An audience that has already seen a magician
In most cities a magician at a corporate dinner is a novelty. In London it is a category, and your guests have a prior opinion about it. Some of that opinion is fair.
What changes the reaction is distance. A performer on a stage at forty metres is something to watch politely. One who sits at your table, hands you the deck and lets you shuffle it is a different proposition, and it survives an experienced room.
Venues
Three kinds of room, three different answers
Livery halls and private dining
Long tables, low ceilings, panelling, no stage worth speaking of. Table work is the only format that fits and it fits beautifully. The best version of a London booking.
Hotel ballrooms
Awards season standard. Six hundred covers on rounds, a stage at one end, sightlines that punish anything small. Close-up at the reception, stage set after the last category.
Warehouse and gallery spaces
High ceilings, hard surfaces, and a sound problem waiting to happen. Close-up works because it does not use the PA. A stage set here needs an honest look at the acoustics first.
Getting him there
An hour from Amsterdam, and paperwork that wants notice
The flight is trivial. The paperwork for a non-UK performer on a paid engagement is not difficult either, but it wants lead time, and it is the one part of a London booking that punishes a late decision.
Everything else is easy: hand luggage, no freight, no equipment, and nothing for your production team beyond a jacket hook and a running order.
Practical
- Travel from
- Amsterdam, about an hour by air, or by rail
- Season
- Year round. Awards season runs heaviest from October to March
- Lead time
- Six weeks or more, mostly because of entry paperwork
- Equipment
- Hand luggage. No freight and no rigging
- Language
- Performed in English
- Costs
- Fee, with travel and hotel quoted separately and at cost
Questions worth asking before you book
Our guests think they have seen this before. Have they?
They have seen a magician. Whether they have had one hand back their own signed card is another question, and the answer is usually no. If your room is a hard one, say so on the first call and the set gets built for it.
Can he do a lunch as well as an evening?
Yes, and a City lunch is a genuinely good slot. Ninety minutes across a private dining room between courses, out by three, and nobody gives up an evening.
Do you work with London event agencies?
Regularly, and it makes for a straightforward booking. Agencies tend to have the running order, the floor plan and the technical spec already, which is most of what he needs.
From the floor
Rooms on the same circuit
A cross-section of the venues this work runs in. Not staged for the camera, and not lit for it either.
-
Arm's length, no table -
Set for dinner, nobody in yet -
Dubai, during the reception -
A gala hall, seen from the back -
Black tie, and the middle left open
Check the date
Send the date and the venue. If the paperwork window is too tight you hear that on the first reply rather than in week three.
Most enquiries are answered the same day.