Limerick magician pays tribute to late dad in show

STEVE Spade from Coonagh will take to the stage in his native county in Dolan's Warehouse next month.

Steve will perform his new show, 'The Lost Magic Tour' on Thursday, September 5 at 7.30pm.

Steve said the show is an homage to some of the master magicians who have gone before him. It focuses on the idea of how magic is lost when an older magician passes away. He explained: “What I've done is I've kind of redeveloped a lot of tricks that I've always seen as a kind of folklore or a kind of tall tale and tried to bring them back to a modern day audience so a lot of the ideas in the show are a hundred years old.”

He added that even though the show features ideas and concepts from magicians of yesteryear, everything in the show is still brand new to him. “I've had to readapt and almost start from scratch.”

Steve described his new act as “a really immersive” and “interactive” show. He said a lot of the audience will be up on stage with him or interacting with him whilst in their seats. “It's a very hands-on show in that sense and they're also going to get a little bit of magic history.” Steve explained: “Some parts of the show are kind of darker than others, but there's humour in the show too... There's mind reading, there's escapology, there's hypnosis.”

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He has already performed the show in Mayo and Cork and the reaction has been very good. Steve said he is “looking forward” to the homecoming show in Limerick and that he is excited and a bit nervous.

Speaking about the process of creating the show, Steve said: “The amount of research and depths that we've gone to to make this for our modern day audience has been immense.” He continued: “There's kind of a personal loss in the show as well. I lost my own dad a couple of years ago and he was just a big inspiration to everything.” As a result, a section of the show was created as a tribute to his late father.

The Limerick man became interested in performing as his uncle did some work as a magician during his childhood. “As a kid I would see him perform every now and again at different family occasions and things and it was just a hobby that became kind of a career. I was always doing magic.”

Tickets for his upcoming show can be purchased either on Ticketmaster or dolans.ie.