It’s a critic’s job to be sceptical, so I spent much of this admittedly lavishly impressive evening in the company of a "psychological illusionist" waiting for something to go wrong.
There was, in fact, an error at the conclusion of one of his tricks, a sort of interactive audience version of "Guess Who", when Brown confidently asserted that only one audience member was left standing, thus disregarding the man in the row behind me.
That was the only one, though, as Brown ran through his extraordinary gamut of "magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship", winding up with a finale so elaborate that a large part of our admiration went to him simply for remembering what he had set out to show us in the first place (that nothing is random, incidentally).
You name it, and Brown already knows it: no sooner had an audience member talked fondly of her late grandfather, than the man’s name, highly unusual at that, wound up engraved on a coin in a locked box.
It’s hard for credulity not to be strained a little at Brown’s seeming ability to hypnotise people on the spot but his Frisbee-throwing method of inviting audience members on stage suggests that either he has stacks of allies who are extremely good at catching or, far more likely, he doesn’t use plants.
If his smug stage persona is tricky to warm to, his skill, and the snappiness of Andy Nyman’s direction, are spot-on.
Until 18 July (0844 579 0090)
Derren Brown: Enigma
Adelphi Theatre
Maiden Lane, WC2E 7NA
