I didn’t really believe in mind-reading before attending Mason King – The Mind Spy at the Edinburgh Fringe this year. Sceptic or believer, prepare to have your socks blown off by Mason King’s…powers? Clever tricks? Magic? Who could say!
The Mind Spy is a show inspired by Project Stargate, an experiment conducted by the US military between 1972 and 1995, which explored psychic testing. Inconclusive results caused the experiment to shut down, but now, Mason King dusts off the previously classified documents to use the audience in his psychic experiments.
We were welcomed into a small, dark room. It was a much more intimate setting than I had anticipated, and suddenly the reality of potential audience interaction struck me. My mind is not a place where a strange man is welcome, I thought to myself. Thankfully, King’s mind-reading was purposeful and focused. My thoughts felt very safe indeed.
The audience was welcomed with a historical introduction to Project Stargate, setting the scene for the following tricks. I won’t go into the details of the performance, as honestly, I can’t put into words the hows, whys, and whats of what happened in that dark room.
“I’m very much interested in the strange and paranormal…but I’m also a sceptic.”
Members of the small audience were randomly selected to gather information from a variety of sources, which they then (successfully!) transmitted to King by the power of mind-reading. Looking up, I hunted for small cameras, or a secret earpiece, or maybe even some sort of brain implant scar. Evidence for such trickery was not found. I relented – he was good.
There was a slight lack of confidence about King, however. I found myself incredibly stressed that he would get it wrong, and I felt that he harboured that concern as well. It felt akin to Hangman at some points, but with higher stakes. And yet, again and again, my mistrust was replaced with disbelief as he pulled incredible words, numbers, and sequences out of thin air, or, more accurately, from the minds of the audience.
The show blew me away. The intimate setting, although initially creating a slightly amateur atmosphere, proved to be a blank page on which Mason King could prove his skills without any sense of doubt. His presence, audience interaction, and mind-reading skills make this show emblematic of everything that the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is about.
Mason King – The Mind Spy: The Where, When, and How
Mason King – The Mind Spy is running from 2 – 16 August (not 9, 10, or 15) at 17.05 in theSpaceUK, Surgeons Hall. You can book your tickets here.
Enjoyed this review? You can read more of Brig’s growing collection of Edinburgh Fringe reviews here.
Featured Image Credit: Mason King
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