Take a closer look: Festival-goers offered the chance to experience their own personal magic show
By: Tom Walters
Last updated: Tuesday, 21 May 2024
Close Up in action
A magic show for one person at a time…
- Close-Up invites the public to a one-to-one performance in local cafes around Sussex
- The magic show forms part of the ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ’s Festival of Ideas
- Brainchild of award-winning magician, Vincent Gambini – stage name for a ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ lecturer
Members of the public are invited to sit opposite a magician in a surreal one-to-one magic show at a local café as part of the ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ’s Festival of Ideas that is part of Brighton Festival, later this month.
is the brainchild of Vincent Gambini – an award-winning, critically acclaimed magician and sleight-of-hand theatre artist - and will be taking place on Friday 24 May at Mac’s Café, Brighton before touring to other cafes around Sussex.
The performance will see participants stepping into a café, popping on a pair of headphones and sitting at a table opposite Vincent, the magician. Those taking part will have to decide what is real and what is fiction, with playing cards transforming and sugar cubes vanishing before their eyes.
Vincent Gambini, whose real name is Dr Augusto Corrieri, Senior Lecturer in Drama, Theatre & Performance at the ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ, said:
“I’ve been studying sleight-of-hand magic since the 90s. But it’s only in the last decade that I’ve been experimenting how to combine magic with theatre and performance art.’ 
“I’ve always been fascinated by film, the way everything is meticulously constructed to appear as real: not just the images, but the sounds we hear, the foley and sound effects.
“Close-up is partly about reality itself being a kind of film, an illusion let’s say. But in this performance, there is no film screen: it’s just me and you, sitting at a café table. The soundtrack, by sound designer Yas Clarke, is all pre-recorded, as is my voice, to which I lip sync precisely. The impression you have is that it's all happening live.”
Close-up premiers at Brighton Festival, before then touring to cafes in Shoreham-by-sea, Hastings and Eastbourne in July, and is part of the Festival of Ideas organised by the ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ’s School of Media, Arts and Humanities and was supported by Farnham Maltings.