“We have a saying in the show,” says Mike Tyler. “Good magicians don’t need sleeves and good magicians don’t need pants.”
The Naked Magicians, made up of Tyler and Christopher Wayne, will be whipping out their wands this week as part of the Sydney Comedy Festival and conjuring their own special brand of magic. They’re subverting the tradition of magic shows to deliver something very different and hilarious – though apparently, there will still be a rabbit.
“Chris and myself have been making our livings as magicians for some time,” says Tyler, “but we felt that there needed to be something else that attracted an audience that wouldn’t otherwise go and see a regular magic show. So we sat down and created a show together, and as the name suggests, we literally strip away the top hats, the capes, the magic wands – all that cheesy, classic kind of magic stuff – to deliver the funniest, cheekiest and naughtiest magic show you’ll ever see.
“It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before and it’s quite a simple concept, really. No-one has ever done a naughty magic show. Our first performance was on Valentine’s Day last year, which was purely coincidental! Chris and I are just friends.”
Speaking of romantic relationships, Tyler continues: “Originally I took up magic to pick up girls, but I’m still single for now and have to take my clothes off to do it,” he laughs. “But I do want to point out that we’re not strippers! We’re primarily magicians and have been working professionally for several years.”
Since The Naked Magicians are somewhat of a parody of traditional magic shows, I ask if we’ll see some subverted tropes of the genre.
“It is a bit of a piss-take of regular, clichémagic. Instead of having a beautiful female assistant onstage we have a blow-up doll, and her name is Ursula. Instead of real rabbits appearing, we have a toy rabbit named Snuggles. He’s our loyal companion and travels around as part of our carry-on luggage. Instead of making doves appear we have a fake dove. And we obviously don’t put our hats on our head.”
Not that head, anyway.
“Yes, exactly,” he laughs.
I wonder whether the whole sans-clothes thing goes a bit deeper than the name alone suggests, particularly in regards to literally stripping back traditional magic. “There is that metaphorical side, but we do promise three things in the show,” says Tyler. “We promise that it will be one of the funniest shows you’ll ever see. We promise that it will have incredible magic in it. And we promise that it will have full-frontal nudity. There are no gimmicks about pretending to get naked – we get it all out.”
Still, just because Tyler and Wayne are a little risqué doesn’t mean that they’re easy magicians. They don’t start the show balls-out – metaphorically or physically. “We start the show clothed and we slowly get naked throughout. We like to make the audience work for it a bit, kind of like a date. A first Tinder date, if you will, but we guarantee a happy ending.”
Those poor cleaners at The Concourse.
SeeThe Naked Magicians,as part of Sydney Comedy Festival 2015, at TheConcourse, Chatswood Thursday May 7 – Saturday May 9.
