On hiatus from his regular Canadian show, having appeared at this year’s Coney Island Sideshow Hootenanny, magician/mentalist Mysterion (and his partner Lizz) appeared at the new-to-me Secret Room, a speakeasy-like venue down some stairs past a nondescript Eighth Avenue entrance. The artist (Christopher Doyle) has appeared on America’s Got Talent, Canada’s Got Talent, and stymied Penn & Teller on their television show, Fool Us.  Smoke is gently piped in to the already atmospheric cellar – which is packed. Drinks and a casual menu are available.

Mysterion is an old fashioned, lounge practitioner. The show’s title has only the flimsiest relation to what he does. “In the realm of everyday existence, the human mind is governed by five senses, but what if it were possible to have six,” is a classic introduction. The performer tells us he had no childhood friends because of an ability to sense secrets. Even his teachers looked at him as a devil.

Examples of the sixth sense arrive immediately as an audience member chooses a number – which turns out to be already written on Mysterion’s slate – and a celebrity – already drawn from a pack of 52 celebrity face cards. Blindfolded, with eclipse glasses as well as cloth, he eschews identifying objects collected from the audience instead creating a trick with time on watch hands and morphing a playing card.

Use of a Leeann doll, apparently featured on television’s That’s Incredible as a source of ominous magic, is unfamiliar to an American audience. Chucky might’ve worked better. There are effects with a Rubick’s Cube (by now, old hat). Mysterion gleans words arbitrarily chosen from a stack of books – assisted by Lizz in the audience. Two volunteers are shown their own mindreading abilities in a segment he calls “extrasensory deception.” Both are surprised. An empty sack suddenly holds something repellent illustrating an arbitrary choice out of a deck of phobia cards. Ech.

The artist is slick and amiable, but the disjointed act calls to mind rabbits out of hats. It needs form, perhaps a more consistently personal take and some updating.

Mysterion- The Man Who Sees Tomorrow
The Secret Room  
707 Eighth Avenue

Photos Courtesy of the performer

The something Strange Sideshow and Market in Toronto, Canada