Learn a trick or two from Keith Barry on New Year's Eve
Keith Barry is busy prepping a new live show, but he takes time out to perform some magic on – and even teach him a trick or two.
There’s a whiff of danger about Keith Barry. He bounces into the Republic of Work in Cork for this interview with his charming, boyish smile and warm hand-shake, but there’s an animal energy in his eyes and upper body. You’d follow him around just to see what he’d do.
Whatever it is, it distracted me into revealing a key secret. Towards the end of our chat, Keith handed me a piece of paper and asked me to write down something that he couldn’t know, such as my first pet or mother’s name or email password.
We both knew what was going to happen next – he’s a world class mentalist, he’s going to guess whatever I write down
The correct thing to do was write down my pet’s name, because who cares that we once owned a Dalmatian called Prince? The wrong thing to do was write down my email password, because it’s my password for everything else and you don’t want anyone knowing that.
I write down my email password – I must have got sucked in by the slight whiff of danger. I crumpled the paper into a tiny ball so he couldn’t possibly have seen it. It took him about 15 seconds to ‘hack into my brain’ and emerge with my password. I genuinely don’t know how he did it.
Keith Barry doesn’t do dull. Previous shows such as Brainhacker, The Magic Madhouse and The Eight Deadly Sins have earned him an international reputation as a live crowd pleaser. He’s one of the writers for the successful Now You See Me movie franchise, with Morgan Freeman and other big Hollywood names. (He’ll shortly start work on Now You See Me 3.) He says there is “a very good chance” he’ll have a network TV show in the US within 12 months.
Keith even taught his wife hypnosis so she could use if for pain management during the birth of their second child, in place of an epidural. I reckon this is his most daring caper to date – my wife still hasn’t forgiven me for brining a packet of crisps in to the delivery ward.
Keith is about to take his latest live show, Deception, nationwide from late December. The seed for it is the Jonestown Massacre in 1978, when Jim Jones deceived his followers in Guyana and poisoned over 900 of them.
Does Keith worry about using a mass-murder as the basis for a magic show? “The show isn’t based on that. I just mention it and then I go into a game of Russian Roulette, using hydrochloric acid, me and water. An audience member gets to decide which one I drink.” Given that he’s married with two kids, what’s the element of risk?
There’s always an element of risk, in any stunt I do. I’ve a degenerative disc in my lower back after all the escapes I’ve done over the years, I’ve had broken fingers, broken toes. Many magicians and escapologists have died in the middle of their craft
But it’s my job to pull off these deceptions, I don’t have a death wish, but there’s always that .001% chance of something going wrong, audiences know this and know they could be there the night it goes wrong.” He also puts his pocket at risk in Deception. “During one routine I’m putting ten thousand euros on the line if someone in the audience can deceive me. I’ve lost cash on stage before, lost €1000 in the Olympia, that’s a big risk for me, I don’t have 10 grand to be losing.” I’m fascinated by the way he can take a germ of an idea and turn it into a two and a half hour show. How does he do it?
It starts with the title, Deception. So, I bought a bunch of books around the psychology of lying. I re-watched movies that I think are relevant, for example Inception with Leonardo DiCaprio. I always get a friend to help me out, this year I have Andrew Gerard, a fellow hypnotist, mentalist, and magician from Canada. The way it works, I come up with all the tricks and demonstrations you see, he helps me put the patter together and gel it all into a show.
This process should take about three months, according to Keith, including building the props for the live shows. But his schedule means he usually has to fit into a five week time slot. “I have to go on super-activity mode, which is 18 hours days, every day for five weeks. I’m in the middle of that now.” That kind of schedule is bound to limit the time he spends with his wife Mairead and their two kids, Breanna and Braden.
My rule is I don’t go six weeks a year without seeing them. Actually, I just had this conversation the other day, I probably spend more time with my kids than most parents that I know of
"I took time off earlier in the year because I knew it was going to be busy now, I said it to the kids, you’ve been to Paris, you’ve been to Dingle twice, you’ve been to Galway, Lanzarote, I packed as much holidays in as I could. And at the weekend, I’ll always take time to bring my son to rugby every Saturday morning, and we’ll go to a forest or something on a Sunday. Even last night, I took half an hour to play a game of chess with my son.” Is he any good?
“Well he beat me!” says Keith, “I’m very conscious of getting them to play board games to keep them off technology. “ At this point we start talking about card games you can play with your kids on rainy afternoon, such as Shithead and Exploding Kittens. Is it easier to deceive kids in these games?
“No way! They have no filter mechanism. As adults, we’ve become pattern followers and pattern seekers, we’re used to thinking in a certain way. Kids don’t have a model to think by, they see through your deceptions much easier than adults. “I did a gig in London a couple of nights ago for NASA-level physicists, I was quite nervous and I haven’t been nervous in a long time, because I thought they’d see through everything. It turns out they were fooled really badly, some of the most intelligent people in the world.
“I’m a scientist myself, I have a 1:1 honours Chemistry degree, I know how scientists think, they think linearly, they don’t think outside the box.” I ask for a quick trick before I go, something to amuse the kids when I get home. He shows me how to make a coin disappear, introducing me to magician speak like ‘lapping’ and ‘time misdirection. I try it on the kids when I get home and they fall for it. (I love my kids, they’re super gullible.) So, starting today, I’m available for christenings, weddings and bar mitzvahs. But if you really want to be entertained, I’d recommend Keith Barry.
Deception kicks off in Castlebar on December 28th, touring around the country until March. Tickets on keithbarry.com and ticketmaster.ie.
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