If you’re a fan of the mysterious and magical, then Cosentino’s Anything is Possible at the Mastercard Theatres, Marina Bay Sands Singapore, by Base Entertainment Asia, is definitely a show not to be missed.
Now this is no ordinary magic show. It’s a combination of close up magic, precognition magic and large scale illusions. Throughout the show you, Cosentino conducts mini lessons on when tricks were first developed, and by who, along with tons of audience participation.
Cosentino himself is very entertaining. He interacts with the audience in a way that’s different from your normal show – he states “the more you participate, the better my show is… so if it sucks it’s not my fault it’s yours”. He’s not a stand-up comic that makes fun of you but engages you and in turn you become the eyes and ears of the audience. With his unique style of close up magic, you’ll be begging to be brought up on stage.
My favorite parts of the show were his remakes of old favorites such as sawing a woman in half, making a large object appear on stage out of thin air, and his physical feats of escape. It’s like watching a mix of David Copperfield and Chris Angel.
His illusions are some of the best interpretations I’ve ever seen – mix that with beautiful women, great sets and props and some amazing choreography and it’s one hell of a good show where he skillfully sets up ever trick and entertains like no other during the transitions.
I got a chance to catch up with Cosentino himself and had a chat about the show. This is what he had to say:
What got you into magic?
Well I was a shy kid and I had a lot of learning difficulties and couldn’t read. When I was 12 I stumbled upon a magic book and my mom being a school principal was like great. So she read it to me and I basically learned to read through learning magic. It was breaking down the words and analyzing them to learn the tricks which taught me to read.
In a place like Singapore, where everything can be scholastic do you think exposing kids to not just magic shows, but learning to do magic would help with things like reading and math?
100%. I actually recently just released a children’s book for reluctant readers called “The Mysterious World of Cosentino”. It’s an illustrated story about how I first got into magic – the young boy, Cosentino finds a magic book and has to stop the evil villain who has banished magic.
The moral of the story is about teamwork and what’s possible when we work together. It’s a series of books where the main character performs a trick that you learn through the process of reading the story. By engaging readers in a non traditional way using magic we get them hooked on reading.
Thats amazing! So I see the aspect bringing the joys of reading to young fans is a great motivator to keep you going. What else keeps you on the road and really drives you?
You know magic was never really popular in Australia and we are the first to have real commercial success. Originally, we were really beat down. We had to break the mold of what magic was. One of the things that really drives me is I want to be the first Australian magician to really conquer the world. It’s a long road ahead but I think we can do it.
To be honest the thing that drives me the most is, that I love doing magic and performing. It’s a lot of work and if your not passionate about it, you just won’t do it. I really love it and I think it shows.
So I would imagine who you have as an audience really affects your show. What do you do if you have a dull audience?
Absolutely 100%, the audience totally affects my show. We bring up something like 13 people on stage during the show, and I have a line at the beginning of the show that says “My shows all about audience participation, the more you participate the better the show.”
So in a place like Singapore where everyone’s more conservative how do you get them to participate?
It’s a little more work. A little more nurturing. I have show them through examples that I’m not here make fun of them. I’m not here to embarrass them. They are just here to examine some handcuff and make sure everything’s legit. You’re the eyes and ears of the audience to make sure everything’s on the up and up.
That’s awesome because I’ve seen your show, and a big part of it is about educating the audience. Not just about what’s going on but about how to react. Is that something that came naturally for you or something you learned?
A little more innate for me. I was recently in Indonesia doing a show, and they had their own shows going on, but kept asking me to teach them how to get the audience to applaud. For me it’s always been something that I naturally was able to do, to figure out how get there attention and put in the right questions.
What can Singapore expect from your show? What makes your show special?
Well we do creations that have never been seen before. They’re mine so you couldn’t have seen them cause no one has. There’s disappearances and reappearances. There’s teleportation where I walk through a door and am instantly transported to another place. And then we have the classics like sawing someone in half.
You can say why do you do this one? We’ve seen it so many times before. But when I didn’t do it, people would ask why I didn’t do it. So what we do is a modern version. No wooden boxes, you can see the girl from start to finish, top to bottom and I literally saw her in half. It’s about taking a classic and modernizing it.
That’s one of the things I like about your show. It’s about making recognizable tricks in such a way that they are unrecognizably recognizable.
Exactly!!! I don’t shy away from saying I didn’t create this, it was created when and by whom and this was when it took the world by storm. I give a whole history and education about it that doesn’t bore you and then I say… but this is how I’m going got do it.
If you have ever wanted to see a true escape artist, illusionist, magician and just over all performer then this is a show not to be missed.
Cosentino’s Anything is Possible runs from now till 27 August 2017.