Kevin Quantum: Anti-Gravity is a show that claims to explore the line between magic and science. This is a brilliant premise. Magic is a difficult and complicated skill that requires a curious mind, and many stage magicians have more than a passing interest in science.
Alas, Anti-Gravity just uses this as set dressing. Rather than using clever stunts and tricks to unveil the wonders of the natural world to the audience, Kevin squanders this idea using a bag of tricks that everyone with access to the internet will have seen before a thousand times.
Perhaps the premise is flawed. Gravity is poorly understood, whereas magic tricks that involve floating things are pretty much a mainstay of any magic act. The presentation of the tricks was very nice, and Kevin is very charming. He is a talented and skilled showman, but ultimately, the show doesn’t bring anything particularly new or fine to the world of magic. This show is a crowd-pleaser for families and an inconsistent one at that.
There are some nice touches. The card trick that uses scientist names instead of traditional card faces is cute but pointless; the majority of the audience has no connection to those names.
Anti-Gravity is very much a show intended for everyone, and we were lucky enough to attend a packed room with a sweaty and slightly rowdy Saturday fringe attendees. One of the show’s flaws is in the way that it interacts with its audience. For example, early on, there was a series of finger-based exercises that went over the heads of some of the slightly more tipsy audience members and led to a much more primal digital response from some of the members of the public at the back. Kevin was professional and well-natured throughout, but the overall tone of the show suffered from a broadly disengaged audience.
In many ways, it felt like a show on a short cruise, crowd-pleasing but ultimately empty; there is brilliance here, but it’s been dumbed down for larger crowds. It’s disappointing.
