7 minute read
Ben Hart
Magician Ben Hart has a few things up his sleeve. Such as the fact he’s now the go-to guy for movie and theatre producers who need some trickery on their set. Ahead of his biggest foray on the Fringe to date, he tells Brian Donaldson that working with the ‘brilliant and kind’ Tom Cruise was a treat
Not that he would ever be so discourteous as to say it, but Ben Hart is no longer just a Fringe magician. He’s been in and out of an Edinburgh August for a decade and is now set to play the Pleasance Grand with Wonder, following in the footsteps of Colin Cloud, another of the Festival’s masterful illusionists.
‘I’ve taken the show I was doing on tour and supercharged it for that amazing room which demands a certain special something,’ Hart says. ‘I remember looking at that room ten years ago when I first did the Fringe and thinking, “that’s the end goal of the journey”. But who knows what’s next?’
What’s next might depend on which influential producer, director or star has him on speed dial. To say that he had a recent curious encounter with Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise might be pandering to those who automatically assume that the pint-sized giant of Tinseltown has a decidedly odd streak to him. Sure, there’s the Scientology stuff for one thing and that time he jumped up and down on Oprah’s sofa proclaiming his undying love for Katie Holmes.
But Hart is having none of that after spending time teaching the actor some sleight-of-hand trickery for him to use in the next Mission Impossible film. He insists that Cruise is ‘quite brilliant and passionate and precise and completely dedicated. He was very easy to talk to, and was kind and interested in the world. I think that’s true of all great makers of anything, that they need to have a curiosity of the world.’
And let’s face it: he’s spent weeks on a closed film set with him, and you and I haven’t. But still . . . ‘When I got the job, I received a phone call and they said, “can you be in a car at 6am tomorrow morning? You’ll have a rapid covid test, then stay in the car until we get the results back and then we go and meet Tom Cruise to talk about magic”. I said, “yes! I’m available!!” I mean, it sounded like the set-up for a movie.’
Ahead of preparing for Wonder, Hart had been busy helping out on other projects. For a few years now he’s been involved in When Magic Goes Wrong for Mischief Theatre, a show which was co-created with two of his heroes in magic,
Penn & Teller. ‘I’ve been advising and designing on other people’s projects which is quite different for me. They can be fun if the brief is stimulating; I’m lucky enough in my career to be at the point where I can choose what I think I’m going to be good at.’
He was also a consultant on the Royal Shakespeare Company’s adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s historical novel The Mirror And The Light which finally reached the stage in September 2021. ‘That was also a good one,’ he purrs. ‘I’m always happy to help people out with a beheading.’
While Hart evokes a large measure of wonderment in others, what does he experience in life that instils such feelings in himself? ‘I find enjoyment and wonder in everything: good food, a nice evening out, exploring the world by walking around. I just like everything, and that’s why I like magic. This is a great profession for me because it’s the intersection between design and construction, and psychology and performance, and storytelling, comedy and history. One day I can be talking about the complicated statistical problems of a deck of playing cards and how they’re affected by shuffles. The next day I can be figuring out how it’s going to look when we chop someone’s head off. These are very diverse things.’
While stand-up comedians are almost expected to come up with a show of brand-new material pretty much every year, magicians are given a little more latitude given that it can take someone many years to hone a trick before it’s ready to be put in front of a crowd. ‘This show contains the tricks I’ve been working on the longest,’ says Hart. ‘People still see me as fresh-faced and young, but I’ve been doing some of these tricks for a long, long time. And the reason is that they evolve with you and say something different in every performance. I can do a trick one night and it will get laughter, and the next night the same trick or piece can feel as though it’s wicked and I’m Lucifer: nothing has changed other than the atmosphere. A trick and a show is a conversation with the audience.’
It’s fair to say, then, that Ben Hart is no ordinary magician. But then again, he has indeed been at this game for a long while and has probably forgotten more about magic than most of us will ever learn. ‘I’ve been doing magic since I was very young, about five years old; I actually can’t remember not doing it. The idea of it is intoxicating: it always has been for me. We as humans are so desperate to experience wonder and magic that we will find it even in something as stupid as a card trick. That to me has always been a very powerful idea. When I was eight, I first went to a magic shop and I thought “wow, you can buy magic”. Turns out you can’t, but you can buy the dream of magic. It sold me the idea that a mortal child could have godlike powers.’
Ben Hart: Wonder, Pleasance Courtyard, 3–28 August, 7.50pm
Sugarcoated Sisters exploded in the last two years and now make their Fringe debut with a show about solidarity and sisterhood. Rachel Cronin hears them espouse a message about catharsis that keeps the emphasis on having fun
‘Y ou know, there’s nowhere else to go sometimes other than to laugh, scream, shout or cry,’ says Tabby Tingey, one half of TikTok-famous double act Sugarcoated Sisters. The award-winning, real-life sibling duo (completed by Chloe Tingey) will be venturing beyond our phone screens for their live debut at this year’s Fringe with cabaret comedy Bittersweet. A cringey yet cathartic reflection of awkward encounters, dating horror stories and sisterhood, it’s sure to have every mid to late twentysomething saying ‘so true’.
After moving back in with their parents over lockdown, seeing old faces and remembering unfinished business, the sisters decided to write music about their uncomfortable encounters and then posted it all on TikTok. Almost accidentally, their posts resulted in 320k followers and nearly six million likes. ‘Sometimes we think that what happens to us is so niche that no one else will possibly get where we’re coming from,’ continues Tabby. ‘But then we get hundreds of comments saying, “that literally happened to me with my friend or my ex-boyfriend or my boss”, and it just makes you feel suddenly not alone or embarrassed because none of these experiences are totally
unique. So you can all laugh about it and get that catharsis. I think that the show is quite explosive. It’s quite rude. And it’s a shock because I don’t think people expect us to go quite so hard.’ Both from performance backgrounds, the siblings aim to promote mental-health solidarity and support through their music. ‘When I was diagnosed with bipolar four years ago, I didn’t know a single person that had it,’ explains Chloe. ‘And I felt so alone and upset, because I just needed somebody to tell me what to do and how to cope. So, we hope that by putting something out there, other people will think, “oh, if they have bipolar and can have fun and laugh about it, maybe I can do that, too”. Maybe it’s not a life sentence to a terrible, terrible time.’ ‘We want our show to be a really safe place for women and non-binary people to come and actually have their experiences relayed on stage in a supportive way,’ concludes Tabby. ‘So, if we can make anyone in the audience feel that sense of solidarity, that’s what we’re hoping to achieve.’ Sugarcoated Sisters: Bittersweet, Just The Tonic At The Caves, 4–28 August, 8.50pm. balancing
