Infamous

Sporting his new shaven head and less prominent pointy beard, Derren Brown is back for his 6th live show Infamous. I was treated to this show for my Christmas Present and it has to be said that it was worth the wait.

I am a massive Derren fan and have watched the majority of his TV shows. Zombie Apocalypse is still my favourite to date, however I am totally in awe of his memory and suggestive powers he possesses. This was the first time I’ve seen him live in the flesh and the seats been slightly off centre and at the front of the second slightly raised section were perfect.

Derren is keen to protect the content of the show whilst it is being performed live. Because of this I will not go into any specifics but I will give you a setting and flavour of what it contained. The stage was a cold dark deserted area with a wooden floor and single chair, the chair lit up by the eerie moonlight created through a small window.

The frisbees were present with numerous attempts to get involved in the show. There was one moment where I was down to six people but sadly not chosen. Despite this disappointment our close proximity to the main events within the show made me feel like I was involved none the less.

Parts of the show were well written and presented and Derren ensures he covers all angles to prevent you from working out how he managed to solve the unknown. There are far too many variables within each piece he acts out and because of this the mind hurts.

It is apparent that parts of Infamous were written a couple of years before it’s taken to the stage and this makes for some pretty jaw dropping spectacles. One part of the show involves a person from the audience picking a number between 1-52 whilst another selects a card from a face down deck. Without giving away exactly what happened, the fact that Derren successfully predicted this exact combination of number and card a couple of years previous in a sealed envelope with the letter he wrote back then is crazy.

Derren successfully studies the complete works of Shakespeare and is able to recite a passage from any page selected by random choice. The detail including paragraphs and punctuation shows how trained his brain is to photographically store all of this information. It is because of this that it is impossible to question or understand how what he does is anything but genuine.

The crowd involvement including somebody close to us being selected in a state of trance was amazing and the way the show moved along was smooth and flawless. Derren has every tool in his bag and where he claims he is not a mind reader or spiritually skilled he demonstrated ways of finding information from people without even asking them leading questions.

The shows finale involved randomly generated numbers obtained via 8 rolled dice and two ten digits written down by frisbee selected individuals combining to create a mobile number that matched a ladies in the crowd….. Simply impossible!!

I thoroughly enjoyed this show in Milton Keynes and would recommend it to anybody curious enough to want to see this live.

DarcyB