Robert Gallup at Sky City Theatre

By GRAHAM REID

Whenever a television programme comes on with a title like Greatest Magic Secrets Revealed, I reach for the remote. I can't see why I would want to know about the techniques behind magic or illusion because then ... well, it wouldn't be magic anymore, would it?

Whether it be a drunken uncle at a party pulling cigarettes out of kids' ears, or David Copperfield making a 747 disappear (why not toxic waste, David?), I'm a sucker for it. Easily impressed, maybe.

That's why I mostly enjoyed American illusionist and magician Robert Gallup's "extreme magic and deadly escapes" show.

He did the small sleight-of-hand stuff like making some large denomination New Zealand cash disappear and come back as an American dollar (about right given the exchange rate), did that slightly scary thing where he ran a spike painlessly through his arm ("It's an illusion folks") and made his lovely assistants disappear then reappear. Just like magic.

His final trick is a Houdini-esque showstopper involving him, a water-filled barrel inside another barrel, some huge holding of the breath, and handcuffs.

The guy from the audience who checked the gear out reckoned it was "kosher", and while you never doubted Gallup would defy death, yet again it was hard to figure out how he did it. This much made a good show.

But it was also punctuated with interludes by his rock video-styled dancers (snatches of Pink Floyd and Van Halen), there was a point where you were watching Gallup perform on the screen rather than in the flesh, and the music signalled to the audience when to applause.

That seemed unnecessarily manipulative, and the man himself oozed the toothy charm of an infomercial frontman.

That said, on opening night he was faced with an alarmingly small audience and had to work pretty hard. We were given 90-plus minutes with no intermission.

If you drop your scepticism and accept this for what it is - a slick casino show - there's enough to enjoy.

Try figuring out the one where people in the audience call out things, a cynic from the crowd writes them down, and then Gallup pulls the same list out of a box he had previously sealed.

Unless you've seen one of those telly programmes you'll think, as I did, that it's magic.