It’s unsurprising Hammond was so inspired. Galea’s a cracking magician, but his back story is fascinating: it turns out that he was magically mentored by the conjuring equivalent of Fagin. Galea didn’t know at the time, but when the watches went missing, the watches really went missing. When Galea twigged to the swindle, rather than becoming a card sharp or conman, he used his powers for good and brought some clean, good fun magic to the table.
The idea for the show is Galea’s baby, but Justin Flom, Nate Staniforth and Justin Wilman, three of Galea’s real life magic mates (all shit-hot US-based magicians), round out said Band. It’s novel for a number of reasons, not the least because the four of them have dreamed up tricks together. Collectively they do shit they simply couldn’t pull off by themselves, which is notable in magic circles because those folk hold their (not metaphoric) cards close to their chest.
“For performers, magic is such a solitary thing normally,” Dyer, the show’s Producer explains. “Everybody has their own tricks and signature moves and protects them with a great deal of rigour. There’s a few tricks in particular, some really fantastic moments in the show, which it would be impossible to do with only one magician. It relies upon having the skills and the focus of more than one of them at a time to realise the great reveal of the trick. I think it’s the first ensemble-based magic show that has been created.”
The show premiered at the Sydney Festival and became super popular; partly reflecting the fact that magic’s having a moment right now. “There’s something about going into a theatre, sitting down and being transported back to your childhood (where you did believe and it was about what you could imagine to be true), having your jaw drop and thinking, ‘How did they do that?’ You’re entertained in an engaging, accessible and non-confronting way. It’s not just that it’s easy entertainment – it allows for a bit of escaping back into a gentler more innocent time. I think people enjoy being fooled when it’s done with good humour and great heart, which is what our show has.”
It also reflects the fact that the guys are cool. There are no rabbits, top hats, capes, creepy pencil moustaches or massive effects. They’re not making a pretence that what they’re doing is real – it’s a trick. It’s also very funny – Galea and Willman in particular have serious comedy chops, having both performed at various comedy festivals melding their tricks with stand-up. “Our guys come out in their street clothes and they just show what they can do to the audience and to each other,” explains Dyer. “It’s more about them as performers, in the same way stand-up acts have to be able to rely on themselves and a microphone and that’s pretty much it.”
That said, it’s not an easy gig. “That’s one of the interesting things about working with James and the other three,” Dyer reflects. “These guys have spent often their lives getting to the point where they are now, learning, honing and refining the skills that they have. There’s a great level of commitment required. Cate Blanchett is very different from Justin Willman but they both have a great deal of focus and dedication on what it is that they’re doing and delivering to an audience.” It’s an intriguing career development for Dyer to be working on this show, coming from such a high-brow background. So how does working on the Band of Magicians compare to something like Uncle Vanya? “It’s the sublime to the ridiculous isn’t it? And I’m not sure which one I’d say was which,” Dyer laughs. “The thing about magic is that it’s entertainment value is inherent within it. There’s no broad themes or ideas hiding in it for people to sink their teeth into, too. Band of Magicians is unashamedly and unabashedly good commercial entertainment, whereas Uncle Vanya and a lot of the other work of the Sydney Theatre Company is trying to be part of a cultural and intellectual conversation, which is fantastic, and you hope it can still be done while giving your audience a really good time in the theatre, but the time they have in the theatre might be good in a whole variety of different ways – it might be confronting, it might be challenging, it might be something you have to sit with over a number of days and process. So, they’re very different art forms, but I think they equally have a place and I don’t value one above the other.”
BY MEG CRAWFORD
