Private Eye

I went to see a Melbourne Fringe Festival show earlier this week called Private Eye. Essentially it was a magic show with a old time gangster theme story to it. The story was pretty corny and the interspersion of magic in it made it occasionally hard to follow exactly what the characters were trying to do. This is not a good thing particularly when the story was pretty simple. Still the ability to combine magic with a story line is not an easy thing to do, so in that regard it was quite passable.

As for the magic itself, there was a lot of sleight of hand and most was done very well. Cigarettes appeared and disappeared, coins appeared and disappeared....come to think of most of the tricks involved that premise.

The best part of it was when one performer called Al Cappuccino did a routine with cards and cigarette that was clearly a routine that was far more polished than anything else in the show.

Overall I actually quite enjoyed it, but have to say that my main gripe was that the show was billed as 45 minutes, but it barely went for 30. I've paid about $15 before to go and see 100 million dollar plus movies that provide entertainment for 2 hours, so when I pay the same price to see something that only goes for 30 minutes it had better be as good as it can be. Sadly this wasn't. I'd give it a 6 out of 10.