Incredibly Human, the new intimate show by famous mentalist and magician Asi Wind invites you to spend an evening in his company, watching some classic tricks reimagined. Step into Underbelly Boulevard to see if he can impress you with his playing cards, Rubik’s cubes, books, and memory tricks.
Thanks to the maximum capacity of Underbelly Boulevard at 200 people, you can expect a high level of audience involvement and participation. Not a single trick is performed without help from members of the audience, so the mood and responsiveness of the crowd have a large impact on the success of each performance.
A total of 10 tricks, including a couple of very simple ones, are performed over the course of 80 minutes, with Asi actively talking to the audience about his childhood, art, magic, and everything in between. While you would expect most of the talk to be part of the tricks, there are a lot of monologues in between the acts too.
The range of tricks may be familiar to regulars of magic shows: he starts with some simple yet impressive mentalism, guessing a number from a random person in the audience, then proceeds to some manipulations of choice. After a slow start, my personal favourite trick comes: a misdirection with a book which starts with what you believe will be a word-guessing trick but ends up being something very different. We continue with a few memory tricks – with cards and Rubik’s cubes, music guessing, and more mentalism.
You expect a grand finale, but don’t really get one with Incredibly Human. The final trick in the show, while a somewhat original form, it is an old trick and you feel rather tired of waiting for the resolution.
While charming, the show feels a bit too free-flowing and rough around the edges. The way Asi presents some of the tricks feels sloppy and spoils the fun of watching him on stage. With a bit of polish, Incredibly Human could amaze those new to magic. However, if you compare this show with Asi’s well-known performance on Penn & Teller: Fool Us, it may disappoint.
