Alan Marriott’s show
has audiences and cutlery spellbound

ANY show that features a good- looking guy in cartoonish oversized sunglasses, clutching his crotch in panic while frenziedly bounding around the audience asking the other men what they’ve done with his willy, gets a top rating in my book. This wasn’t an act concocted by some director with a Farrelly brothers-style sense of humor. The guy trying very earnestly to locate his missing appendage was hypnotised and, I kind of think, got the short end of the stick on Saturday night when stage hypnotist and qualified hypnotherapist Alan Marriott put him into a trance. Asking for his willy back was the encore to his thinking he had soiled himself. This is why I don’t go in for this sort of thing. Fortunately, there are lots of people who relish the opportunity to make complete asses of themselves in front of hundreds of strangers. And good that they did, as the evening would not have been nearly as fun with all of us staring resolutely into the middle distance every time Marriott solicited volunteers, as tended to be the response of my mate, Mike, and I. I had suggested the week before that we venture to Fish Hoek to see a guy bend spoons and read minds. “Dom, that’s a helluva way to travel to see an oke bend some cutlery. I’ll snap you a spoon for free in the comfort of my own kitchen if you like,” was his response. Despite this enticing offer, we trudged off for proper theatrics to watch “man of the mind” Marriott have duct tape plastered tightly around his head while he told members of the audience furnished with paper and koki pen what they had drawn.

Then he started with the cutlery. One look from Marriott and they bent back in fear. If I could duplicate an expression of that intensity I’m fairly certain I, too, could intimidate silverware. Making a heavy wooden table levitate is another matter.

I’m not entirely sure what in the show is “mentalism”, illusion or just plain magic trickery. A few days later on the phone, Marriott is insistent it isn’t magic although illusions do sometimes play a part. Amazingly, it would appear that years of harnessing his mental abilities have resulted in him being able to do most of this stuff. And he attributes his success to becoming fascinated with “this kind of thing” as an adolescent before his belief system had developed.

I suspect this is visualisation and manifestation beyond what John Kehoe could have imagined possible when he began expounding on Mind Power. “I ask it to bend,” Marriott says of the obliging fork. “It sounds crazy. There’s no real explanation. When you visualise it, it becomes reality to you and once it’s reality to you, maybe it’s a way of enforcing it to happen. You believe what you see, but do you believe in it enough to do it?”

At the end of the evening, Marriott cancelled all the hypnotic “suggestions” he had made to the folk on stage. All except one. When he said his name at the end, they were to stand up and shout “I believe in fairies”. Let’s hope none of them attend Marriott’s next performance with a first date in tow. Leaping up at the start of a show to declare loudly one’s belief in fairies is not likely to result in any action after the show.

dominique.herman@inl.co.za

EXTREME
HYPNOSIS
Full Circle Magazine
www.fullcircleonline.co.za

Alan Marriott recently held his
very successful and extremely
funny Extreme Hypnosis Show
in Fish Hoek.

Not only did he bend forks
and read people’s minds,
he also had people playing the piano dancing,
and hugging each other to keep warm
‘because they were cold’.
Just see the look on the face
of the man in the white t-shirt
when he wakes up to see the man
in the black shirt holding his knee!

The general consensus was that the show was hilarious. Keep an eye out for future shows.

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