Theatre review:Mind Mangler: Member of the Tragic Circle

While Mischief Theatre is still happily franchising around the world, its original cast have been doing more work separately since the TV show. Probably less of a big gossip-worthy falling out and more of a "The Play That Goes Wrong is celebrating a decade in the West End and they might fancy a change" thing, and the core writing trio of Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields are still together for their latest show, a spin-off from Magic Goes Wrong: Mind Mangler: Member of the Tragic Circle has Lewis reprise his titular psychic for a full two hours. He's joined by Sayer as Steve the Stooge, the Mind Mangler's flatmate who comes out of the audience in a series of impenetrable disguises (a T-shirt that says "audience member" and later a T-shirt that says "different audience member") and still can't manage to help get the tricks right.

Theatre review: Magic Goes Wrong

Taking up half of Mischief Theatre's year-long residency at the Vaudeville Theatre is a return, after an attempt at a slightly more conventionally-structured play in Groan Ups, to the "Goes Wrong" format of their original hits and their current BBC1 show, and a "does what it says on the tin" approach of fitting as many comic disasters as they can into the running time. The usual writing team of Jonathan Sayer, Henry Lewis and Henry Shields are this time joined by Penn & Teller to create their most spectacular show yet - and one where the accidents get grislier than ever before, as Magic Goes Wrong. The format seems to be inspired by the Vegas-style magic shows that have recently been making a return to the West End, whose posters promise a whole team of magicians with superhero-style names. And so Shields' Sophisticato has organised this evening as a charity gala for the victims of disasters in magic, in memory of his father, the original Sophisticato (crushed to death by his own props.)