Sorcerer’s Apprentice Episode Seven

"Dangling from the thread like a fishing rod"

Sorcerer’s Apprentice 3 The day starts with a few chores in the courtyard to organise the mind: cleaning rabbit hutches, polishing shoes and sweeping the path. Shortly afterwards they are summoned to the drawing room by Sorcerer Max Somerset to be told what todays magical theme will be - Transportation. Max demonstrates this with a nice little trick whereby he begins by turning on a small table lamp at the side of the room. He proceeds to ‘fish’ in the air, catching a small goldfish that he drops into a glass full of water held by Ellie. After pouring the water, fish and all, into a chrome vase he places it over Ellie’s head to reveal that the water and fish have been transported from the vase into the lightbulb of the table lamp Max turned on at the beginning of the act. Very nicely performed, I must say. Max then takes a more serious tone as he explains that the next performance the sorcerees will be doing will be in front of a group of local school children - a real audience at last! And so on to learning the tricks.

The girls are taught a trick involving a silk, a borrowed ring and a teddy bear demonstrated by Miss Evans. A volunteer from the audience is asked for a ring and are asked to hold it inside a silk. After a magical wave of the hand, the ring is shown to have transported from under the silk and into a box being held (visibly) by the teddy.

The boys are assembled by Mr Knight and showed a neat transportation trick whereby a piece of paper transports from under one cup into another by its side. This is accomplished by a careful tug of the spare paper that is attached by a thread to their wand.

The next day the sorcerees are assembled by a piano playing Max who points out that correct annunciation is critical to confidence on stage and that they would be receiving voice-coaching by actor, magician and coach Paul Rothman. The proceed to work on their speech and communication skills including a humerous part where they try the tongue twister “Chopsticks shops sell chopsticks”.

They spend the rest of the afternoon practicing until they see the audience arrive. The nerves start to show when the performers realise that this might be a difficult audience. We begin with “the boy with the million dollar smile” - Thomas Hewson who’s performance is flawless. Unfortunately as he leaves the stage he picks up his wand with its paper ball dangling from the thread like a fishing rod, leaving the audience with no doubt as to the secret behind the trick. This will cost him dearly with the Sorcerer. We run through each of the sorcerees with none of them giving astounding performances, and the audience getting bored. One audience member falls asleep, only being awoken by the ever annoying Joe Savage. Finally Frankie takes to the stage and completely fluffs his trick, but manages to keep the audience amused at least with his humour.

We end the episode with a review of the performances by Max who, it must be said, is looking might unimpressed. At this point it’s hard to say if any of the students will be good enough to become crowned the Sorcerer’s apprentice.