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from Edinburgh Festival Guide 2023

by List Publishing Ltd

RESTAURANTS

back to the Fringe with a personal show which touches on trauma.

Eddie Harrison meets the Scottish mentalist who’s making waves in America

Tennessee Williams once wrote that a stage magician provides ‘illusion that has the appearance of truth’. Straight out of Harthill, Colin Cloud describes himself as a mentalist, someone who demonstrates highly developed mental or intuitive abilities: both definitions merge in his new show, After Dark. There are always plenty of mentalists around, but Cloud has fashioned his own take on the form, and it’s one that comes from the heart.

‘If you’d told me back at the start that this is what I’d end up doing, I’d have said you were crazy,’ says Cloud after downing a few early Americanos to clear his head the morning after a Fringe warm-up show in Glasgow.

‘I’m quite a shy, reserved person, and I’d have been petriﬁed to have so many eyes on me. I was fascinated by the deductions of Sherlock Holmes when I was a child, and interested in how that idea might work as live comedy. I went from playing to 40 people in a teashop, to 60 in The Caves, then several hundred in the Pleasance Grand, and then to America’s Got Talent. I had no real desire to be famous, but once I was in the room immersed in the performance, things just developed naturally from there.’

Unlike the stereotype of a slick, impersonal magician, After Dark’s fusion of comedy and illusion is a deeply personal show for Cloud. One part of the routine, involving razor blades, reﬂects on a particularly unhappy moment in Cloud’s life, and you can hear a pin drop as the emotion plays out.

‘That’s good to hear; that’s what I intended. Although I’m doing illusions and performing to connect with people, I’m also trying to be honest with my audience about what I’ve gone through personally; a story I want to share. The show is called After Dark, and that’s speciﬁcally about getting away from the darkness and getting into the light, so I do want to acknowledge all the dark stuff I went through,’ says Cloud, previously known under the name Colin McLeod. ‘The name change started out as a misprint, but it stuck because it was somehow more memorable. It also felt like there were aspects of my own personality that I wanted to embellish for the show to be impactful on an audience.’

After Dark hinges on the audience following Cloud through complex routines designed to bamboozle, but it’s also straight-up comedy. His inﬂuences are familiar enough. ‘I grew up with The Fast Show and Chewin’ The Fat. And I’m a big fan of Stewart Lee, the way he dissects what he’s saying as he’s saying it; he’s got a real meta approach. I also looked at great comics like James Acaster, Daniel Tosh and Anthony Jeselnik, looking for the best way to connect with an audience.’

And there’s no hiding place; pretty much everyone attending ends up participating in Cloud’s illusions. All of which is by design. ‘In the US, I learned from watching people play stadiums of ﬁve or ten thousand people, but how can you create something big that’s also involving and intimate? So I encourage people to get out their phones and use them in the show. That’s a risk, because you want people to stay in the experience and not getting a text from the babysitter that’ll take them out. But it also helps with possible participation. I always want to ﬁnd new twists.’

And after some American success, heading back to the Edinburgh Fringe should ﬁnally give Cloud the chance to polish his craft at home. ‘I want people to come in with open minds. I want to do what people expect of me but in a way that they’re surprised . . . and it has to be worthy of 60 minutes of anyone’s time. That’s the truth.’

Colin Cloud: After Dark, Underbelly Bristo Square, 17–21 August, 9.15pm.

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