Home Counties Magical Society

The club room was very full last night with members, and a large number of prospective members who had traveled to see Mark Elsdon lecture. They were in for a treat as Mark delivered a fantastic lecture of visually stunning magic ranging from close-up to mentalism, mixed with Marks own  unique sense of humor. Ambitious Cards, the stunning Rubik Cube effect, predictions, triumph, changing cards and a fantastically open and honest demonstration of each effect gave us an evening that was brilliant.

Mark started the lecture by performing 'Balance', where a seemingly normal deck of cards (not in the box) where shown to balance on firstly his finger tips, and then a single finger. The effect was quite eerie as he freely showed the audience up close the deck balanced at one end on his fingers. He then completely foxed the onlookers by letting people look under the deck, and removing the bottom card and encircling the deck to show that there were no wires, magnets attachments holding the deck up.

Following this Mark performed 'pre-preconfiguration'. Mark thought of a card in a spectators borrowed shuffled deck, cards where dealt onto the table and the spectator freely stopped him at a card. The rest of the deck was placed to the side. and the spectator selected one of these piles to deal from. They then dealt down cards spelling the name of the top card of that deck, to find that the dealt card, the top card of the two piles, and the card on the table (that Mark had thought about before the dealing started) all turned out to be the same value card, in an excellent triumph type effect.

The next effect actually fooled me until I knew the method. A freely chosen block of cards were taken from a spread deck, a spectator then counted and returned these to the deck, and Mark showed each card form the top of the deck to the audience, the spectator was told to remember the card at the number that equaled the number of cards he had previously removed from the deck. Mark then revealed in an envelope that had been in the possession of an audience member throughout the lecture, the number of cards they freely selected, and the name of the chosen card. Excellent, but mind bogglingly simple stuff!!

Mark then moved back to showing close-up effects, where 8 Jacks were shown, four with red backs, four with blue. The reds were put aside and left with a spectator, and the blues, slowly changed from blue backs to red backs, and back again. The spectator was amazed when the red back cards they held, turned out to have have green back, and then chaos ensued as the previously shown blue back cards were shown to have blank backs.

Mark then demonstrated a fantastic effect that provides a way to get your business card to someone as part of a trick. A deck of cards each with a famous personalities name on the back where shown, and a blank small piece of card with a famous name written on it was placed, name unseen onto the table. The spectator selected a name from the deck, and the chosen name, and name on the business card matched.

Mark closed the first half of the lecture by performing 'Zenner-Tech', which he performed with myself. ESP symbol cards were placed down onto the table, and sticky labels applied to the back of each. Mark then named one of the symbols (square, circle, star, lines, cross), and I pointed to which card I thought it was, and the label was marked accordingly. The card where then turned over to show that I had correctly identified each of the symbols.

Mark opened the second half with a brilliant 'Triple Impact' prediction, where three cards selected by a spectator were place into the spectators left, right and back pocket. Mark then showed that he also had the same cards, in the same pockets as the spectator. He even gave the spectator the choice of mirroring the location of their cards, or having them in exactly the same pockets.

Mark moved on to demonstrate his handling of the 'Heirloom' cards, along with a good insight into the normal method of prediction, and a massive cut down of the number of photos required.

An effect based around cards with numbers on the face, where a freely selected card was chosen. Questions were asked of the spectator, the answers being spelt to give a number of cards on the table. These cards when through a 'binary maths' type filtering, up jogging every other card, and removing half, until a single card was found to the be selection.

Mark then performed his Rubik Cube effect. I think the thing most people had hoped to see. In this effect Mark got nine spectators to sign one square of one face of the cube. He then passed the cube through the audience, and everyone mixed it. When it was returned to Mark, it was totally mixed. Mark then examined the cube, remembering it's order, before he put on a blind fold, and proceeded to solve the cube. Pausing now and then to check with a spectator to the completeness of the puzzle, he solved the cube in one minute fifty seconds!! He then explained how he had done it, and talked at length about the principals in use, and the methods required. Mark also talked about his in depth seminar to teach the effect one on one. A few places remain on this, and if you book please let Mark know you saw it here on the HCMS site.

After thunderous applause, which was well deserved, Mark showed his final effect, a wonderful ambitious card routine, ending, as I'd guessed with an ambitious card IN box, using his superb 'Riser Deck', which is a thing of beauty just to look at.

For the members who were wondering why there was a tube of Smarties on everyones seat.. Marks lecture flier said the following:

Do I need to bring anything with me?
- An open mind and an attentive attitude. Also, you’re more than welcome to take notes, so a pen and a notepad could be useful. Plus some money obviously, if you’re intending to buy anything, and some Smarties to share with all your friends in the magic club. Aside from social inadequacy, nothing brings magicians closer together than sharing Smarties.

The Home Counties Magical Society aim to accommodate all needs of their lecturers!! We hope that they brought you all a little bit closer during Marks lecture!

Mark provided a fantastic lecture, with every effect well within the reach of all performers, he delivered something that everyone could take home and work with, and certainly provided effects and information that could enhance anyones routines.

His lecture is well worth booking, or going to see if you get the chance. For those that missed it, you missed a treat. I think maybe his lecture shouldn't be called 'Tricks You Might Actually Do', more, 'Tricks That I'm Definitely Going to Do..'

Thank you again Mark Elsdon.