Show 2: Mr Swallow and the Vanishing Elephant

I last saw Nick Mohammed play his character of Mr Swallow in 2016 when he performed his Houdini tribute escapism show - a triumphant feat of big show, big effects, big character and charisma. He returns with a show about magic and making an elephant disappear. Only problem is, he couldn't hire an elephant!

This was a marked contrast to Palamides' show, which I had watched just an hour beforehand, but it was no less thrilling, engaging and enthralling.

The premise of the show is that Mr Swallow is going to perform a grand magic show at the festival, the highlight being the disappearance of a fully grown elephant. Along the way he falls us with some feats of magic, sleight of hand and memory.

Highlights include a Geordie assistant (played by Mohammed) reading tarot cards for an audience member, though rather worryingly they all come up with rather grim prognoses!

He also attempts to saw himself in half with a rather untrustworthy power saw, and halfway through he performs a memory trick, by showing that he's memorised the menus of four popular restaurant chains, before ending with the big event - making himself disappear (in place of the elephant).

Given that it was the first preview of the festival, the show was bound be a bit rough around the edges, though it slowly became evident that far less of the effects were working to plan as Nick Mohammed had been hoping!

It was full credit to him as a performer, though, that everything seemed as if it had been carefully planned, even the particularly drunk girl brought on to stage for one but I thought had been a plant (surely who would willingly let a pretty boisterous, disruptive audience member to do some key tasks of concentration? She had been asked to pick some items from a menu, a seemingly straightforward task, alas not for her). As it turns out I think she was reluctantly let on to stage to shut her up - Mr Swallow, however, gallantly played along and tried to salvage the show.

The true big finale was meant to be a true demonstration of memory - Mr Swallow had been asking various audience members' names as we were entering which he was going to recall, however given the half hour delay to the show's start and the series of unfortunate events, Mr Swallow abandoned it in favour for memorising a pack of cards in less than a minute - even he acknowledged it wasn't particularly funny, but his character had engendered such warmth and sympathy from us all we got behind him, and to his credit he did it!

This show was a tremendous display of comic theatre and character comedy, of styling things out in the face of adversity, and keeping face. Despite the hiccups it was a phenomenally fun evening's entertainment and I've no doubt he'll iron the rough edges soon, but to be honest the off script events really added to the experience. An excellent show and a guaranteed good laugh.

Score: 9/10

Venue: Pleasance Courtyard - One

Dates: 5^th-26^th August

Time: 19:30

Price:   £14.50 (£13.50 concessions) weekends, £13.50 (£12.50) or £12.50 (£11.50) weekdays