Tricks of the trade

Magic, manipulation and misdirection are the ingredients in the mysterious mix of a touring play, Tom McKinlay writes. 

Christchurch-based performers Lizzie Tollemache and David Ladderman as Mr and Mrs Alexander. PHOTO: SUPPLIED
Christchurch-based performers Lizzie Tollemache and David Ladderman as Mr and Mrs Alexander. PHOTO: SUPPLIED

Queen Victoria took part in spiritualist seances. Indeed, she attempted to contact Prince Albert after his passing. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a believer and member of the British Society for Psychical Research, dedicated to the investigation of paranormal phenomena.

The dead were never more alive than in the 19th century. But not just in Britain.

Spiritualist and magical practitioners, genuine and otherwise, journeyed far and wide, including to New Zealand and it is these people who are celebrated in a show that tours the South from next week.

Mr and Mrs Alexander is the creation of Christchurch-based performers Lizzie Tollemache and David Ladderman, who have mined the stories of ‘‘the golden years of magic and spiritualism'' and the sub-culture of ‘‘social misfits, freaks, hucksters and mediums'' that populated it.

Mr and Mrs Alexander are fiction, Tollemache says, but nevertheless an amalgamation ‘‘of a bunch of different stories that are true, and accounts that are true'', of travelling performers, old medicine shows and revivalist entertainers who hawked and strutted around New Zealand.

The play tells the story of the couple's last performance, in which something strange happens and they disappear, leaving the question: were they the real thing or con artists?

Tollemache ferreted through old newspapers and sundry dusty records to research the play but also consulted ‘‘secret books'' the couple have collected over the years.

‘‘How-to guides but also accounts of the lives of certain magicians, illusionists, mind-readers, fraudulent mediums. A lot of those are quite rare now and out of print, and have been for a long time, but there are certain circles of magicians who you can get books off,'' Tollemache says with a conspiratorial chuckle, lifting the magician's cape just a little.

‘‘There's a weird little black market of secret magic books."

The 19th-century milieu in which the play is set was a fascinating time, she says. Ordinary people were suddenly confronted with the wonder of electricity and steam power, which most couldn't explain but seemed like magic, though they were told it was science.

‘‘You can see why something like talking to the dead or being able to predict the future seemed like it could absolutely be scientific, because there were all these unseen forces around them that all of a sudden were part of everyday life."

The itinerants and peripatetics at the heart of her play grifted their way through the country, often following the gold rushes, she says.

Many would not necessarily have declared themselves entertainers when they arrived. They were peddling health tonics and cures, snake oils, but were in fact performers.

‘‘That was just how they would get people in to buy their products.''

In a similar way, travelling evangelists would use what are now considered stage arts to attract a crowd to sell their message.

Partners on stage and in life  

The performance arts Tollemache brings to the stage have been developed over the past 10 years, including during a scholarship to the Globe Theatre, in London, and in courses with the Royal Shakespeare Company while there.

Since returning to New Zealand, she has worked at Christchurch's Court Theatre and with the Lyttelton-based Loons Circus Theatre Company.

Her partner on stage and in life, David Ladderman, also a Loons alumnus, is a well-travelled street performer, among other things, having appeared at two Edinburgh Fringe Festivals. The pair have previously taken Mr and Mrs Alexander to Canada and the World Buskers Festival.

It's the fourth show they have created together, all of which have in common some mix of New Zealand stories, settings and characters. Both Dunedin and Oamaru feature in the Alexanders' play.

‘‘We make theatre that uses illusion and circus effects to tell the story. We do cabarets and things like that as well but where we are unique, I guess, is that our shows are actual theatre, actual plays that use effects as part of the story.''

All the tricks and effects used during the show are the very ones that would have been employed in the 19th century, Tollemache says, which gets some interesting reactions.

There are older audience members who recognise them from magicians' shows of their youth. Then there are young people whose experience of what is magical is from film or computer graphics.

‘‘When something is right in front of them in the room, it seems that much more magical because it is so lo-fi, because ‘it couldn't possibly be fake if it is right there in front of them'. That's really interesting for us.''

The play incorporates traditional sleight of hand, including the cup and ball routine or three-card Monte, sideshow tricks involving hammers and nails, cutlery bending, mind-reading, telepathy, a mass hypnotic illusion and a possum trap.

‘‘Everyone is totally fine afterwards. Don't worry, nobody is going to be walking around clucking like a chicken,'' Tollemache reassures.

At one point in the show Mrs Alexander is put into a trance while an audience member monitors her pulse as it slows and stops. On one occasion, in Canada, the show encountered a hiccup when the monitor was inadvertently hypnotised herself and collapsed to the stage.

‘‘She was fully under and we had to gently and slowly bring her back, on stage. That part of the show has now been changed to avoid a repeat, despite there being a standing ovation on the night in question.

‘‘It was a really good reminder that you are playing around with quite powerful forces and you have to be really careful.''

 



The show

Mr and Mrs Alexander plays at:

• Oamaru, Inkbox Theatre Oamaru Opera House, Wednesday May 25, 8pm

• Twizel, Twizel Events Centre, Thursday May 26, 7.30pm

• Queenstown, St Peter's Church hall, Friday May 27, 7.30pm

• Roxburgh, Roxburgh Town Hall, Tuesday May 31, 7pm

• Alexandra, The Cellar Door, Wednesday June 1, 7.30pm

 

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