Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, 24 January 2012, and touring

ONE of the characteristics of Jamie Harrison’s shows for Glasgow’s Vox Motus is his illusionist’s eye for stagecraft.

AWAY from the company, he has worked as a magician, and you can see in his shows, which he co-directs with Candice Edmunds, a love of stage trickery. Only now, however, has the company put magic centre stage. The Infamous Brothers Davenport not only features a set of mystifying tricks – a table that seems to be weightless, a violin that plays itself – but it is also about magic.

Vox Motus's The Infamous Brothers Davenport

In 19th-century America, the Brothers Davenport were two real-life illusionists who cashed in on the craze for spiritualism. With their “spirit cabinet” they toured to the UK, letting audiences believe they had a fast-track to the dead. They were the Derren Browns of the day, playing on people’s psychological weaknesses as well as on their love of a mystifying illusion.

In the hands of playwright Peter Arnott, in this co-production with Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum, the brothers go on a rags-to-riches journey from back-woods obscurity in rural America to theatrical fame with an act that seems to offer more than end-of-the-pier thrills. Arnott keeps our own sense of scepticism at bay by suggesting one of the brothers, Willie, is genuinely haunted by the ghost of their teenage sister, whose traumatic death was brought on by an abusive father. Played with wide-eyed charm by Scott Fletcher, Willie Davenport really believes he can communicate with the dead.

His brother Ira, played by real-life sibling Ryan Fletcher, is altogether more hard-headed. He’s a showman with no scruples about exploiting his audience’s gullibility. And it is not only his Victorian audience that is prepared to be taken in. We may like to think of ourselves as modern-minded rationalists, but we too can never quite shake off the belief that something unknown is lurking inside the spirit cabinet.

Edmunds and Harrison play on this by inviting half-a-dozen audience members onto the stage, kitting them out in period clothing and asking them to inspect the stage equipment just as Derren Brown does with his studio audience today. It means as well as the back-story about the Davenports’ journey, the show thrills and mystifies us with Victorian illusions, leaving half a doubt that some of it maybe genuinely magic.

It is this flamboyant aspect of the show, compered by a suitably loquacious Gavin Mitchell and overseen by Anita Vettesse as a bereaved Victorian lady, that distinguishes ‘The Infamous Brothers Davenport’. The auditorium doors slam shut and we all hold hands as if for a séance, merrily joining in the highly theatrical fun of it all.

Despite Arnott’s presence as a writer, however, the play shares with some previous Vox Motus productions a certain aimlessness in the narrative. We’re too familiar with the idea of a showbiz family being driven by a tyrannical father to be surprised by it, and we get the idea about the brothers having differing perspectives long before the story plays out.

So while these scenes add a haunting dimension to the stage act, it is the stage act itself that creates the most dynamic part of the evening. Still, it’s all done with enough wit and technical flare to make it an enjoyably distinctive night out.

© Francis McLachlan, 2012

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