Magic
David Haig
Directed by Lucy Bailey
Chichester Festival Theatre
Star rating: 3.5
It is terrific testament to David Haig’s theatrical status and charisma that he can almost fill a large theatre for the first post-preview matinee of a new play: “Now sits expectation in the air”. Even the staff in the café where I had lunch first were talking about it.
And it’s an interesting, and highly dramatic idea to explore the friendship and tension between Harry Houdini (Hadley Fraser) and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Haig, himself). Houdini was a highly skilled, world famous illusionist but totally rational. Conan-Doyle, equally famous as a novelist, was totally and irrationally convinced by spiritualism which surged exploitatively in the aftermath of the First World War. Initially each was impressed by the other but later there were stand-offs because the two men were never going to agree. The whole point is that Houdini understood misdirection and trickery so he could recognise it instantly. And, off-stage he was committed to scientific truth. Conan Doyle on the other hand refused to believe that Houdini wasn’t really walking through walls and escaping from multiply-locked chains. It was conflict between a realist and a fantasist.
Fraser nails the onstage brashness and confidence of Houdini revealing a very different, thoughtful man in private with his wife Bess (Jenna Augen – good) and socially with the Conan Doyles. He does a brave hoisted up (upside down!) escapology trick to set the scene at the beginning and it makes arresting theatre, complete with exciting lighting and lots of frantic pianola, before he meets Sir Arthur and his wife in his dressing room afterwards. Later as the tension mounts Fraser communicates scepticism with every inch of his body but it’s subtle – sometimes he simply inclines his head and we know what he’s thinking.
David Haig’s Conan Doyle is decent, impassioned and good at friendship. But he is also totally blinkered about the practical truth of seances (some good scenes with Jade Williams as the famous medium, “Margery”) and the nature of the “afterlife”. Of course it’s a strong performance but, talented actor as he is, there is something slightly mannered and whiney about Haig’s voice which penetrates every character he plays and once you’ve noticed it, it begins to grate.
Claire Price puts in pleasing work as Conan Doyle’s (second) wife Jean who also claims to be a medium of sorts. Beyond the two central couples are six actors who form a troupe to support the magic and play all the minor roles and, on the whole, they do a fine job.
At its heart this is a thoughtful, sometimes moving, play about grief and how you deal with it. Millions turned to mediums in the 1920s because they were desperately trying to process the loss of their sons, brothers, husbands and sweethearts a decade earlier. Conan Doyle’s son, Kinglsey was killed in the war, for example. At the same time the happily married Houdinis grieve for the children they would have liked but never had – but they do it with rueful honesty.
Magic also presents an interesting exploration of the nature of belief. If someone is determined to believe something supernatural. quasi -religious or conventionally religious then no scientific argument will ever shake them. And that is an unexpectedly topical message for 2026 as we try, across the globe, to understand beliefs we can’t share.
It’s strong theatre but not quite in the league of Haig’s earlier play, Pressure which also began life at Chichester and which is due to be released as a film this year.
