Houdini’s Greatest Escape – Touring Performance

[Ad- gifted experience] Dann and I were excited to see Houdini’s Greatest Escape at Northampton’s Royal & Derngate, a new venue that we had not attended before. This performance is traveling all around England, so it is well worth seeing if your local theatre has a performance going, especially as it was such a spectacular, funny show!

Houdini’s Greatest Escape tells a tale of Houdini, looking to perform for the King of England, expanding his international fame. Him and his wife, along with his brother popping in from time to time, are currently in England performing, when Houdini gets accused of picking a safe at a police station and stealing all of the stuff that’s inside. Though Houdini does want to clear his name, he is told about the corruption at this specific police station. The chef of police is working directly with the local mob to basically do whatever they want.

There were only a few actors within this play, but there were a ton of different roles and characters, so lots of costume changes and references to the fact that they were playing multiple characters. Dann always comments on shows where the joke is that one person is playing lots of people. There is a moment when one actor is selling a paper, but also playing both people in a couple commenting on a paper and a fourth guy who is commenting on the couple and flirting with the wife. This is done by him wearing a hat behind the paper stand, showing his kilt off to be the husband, flipping his kilt into a wig to play the wife, and then pulling up a pocket mustache to play the other gentlemen. This looks extremely exhausting and as the joke goes on and on, it’s a really funny thing to witness!

Houdini’s Greatest Escape is quite a funny, well written performance, with so many little jokes and funny lines. It was wonderful watching the actors swap between characters and get to the bottom of what was going on to the Houdini’s. There were some almost random seeming scenes, adding in comedic breaks, at one point they are in the forest and find this burly man who just likes scents?! It’s wild, silly, and very fun to watch. This scene even wrapped up at the end too, which was surprising as I thought it was a throw-away.

As a fan of Houdini generally, and with the back knowledge of how much he hated mystics who spoke to the dead, I really enjoyed this performance and felt it brought a lot of life to Houdini! It’s well worth a watch if you are looking for something funny too.

You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!