Chris Dugdale: 2 Faced Deception

It's probably useful as a magician to decide where exactly you fall on the spectrum of skepticism and mysticism. You could illustrate the ends of this spectrum with 'mediums' like John Edwards on one side, and Derren Brown, who ostensibly uses mathematics and social psychology to execute his tricks, and to whom Chris Dugdan readily compares himself in his own publicity for Chris Dugdale: 2 Faced Deception.

But Chris Dugdale himself hasn't decided on his own magical angle, and the audience is left to try to keep up with him. At times 2 Faced Deception is a comedy act, at others he is earnestly claiming to read audience members' thoughts with genuine psychic ability, and at other times it's straight-up vaudeville. We're so busy keeping up with Dugdale's thematic choices that we lose track of why we're impressed that he just dealt two 9s (was that the number the pretty lady in the front was thinking?) or whether or not we were actually told a story about Las Vegas grifters, or if that was preamble to another illusion. He is mute for a section of the first act. He uses a prosthetic face exactly once. He implies his own psychic ability and then reveals a sleight-of-hand trick that took him years to perfect. It's a bit chaotic, but hey, it's magic, and despite its confounding pace, it's going to delight you in basically all the ways a magic act should.