Stuart Michael – Psychic Medium
Wonderville

WONDERVILLE is a seriously well-placed venue in the heart of London’s West End. With its programme of comedy, magic and playful cabaret, it feels more like a private club than a theatre and tonight it’s packed to the gunnels. 

Stuart Michael comes with a reputation as psychic medium and – so we are told – with an awesome list of celebrity clients. If this is the case, you wonder why he needs to do a show at all. Nevertheless we all sit excitedly at our tables, sipping our drinks expectantly as if it’s bingo night.

Michael, when he enters, is an ordinary sort of bloke, and the stage a small proscenium with no trappings. In fact the only gesture toward glitz is a row of identical neon panels picturing the performer. One panel flashes on and off distractingly throughout the show – whether as evidence of an electrical glitz-glitch, or as a symbolic reference to the elusiveness of ghosts, is not clear. What is made immediately paramount is that Michael will make contact with the dead and tell us what they say. 

Wow! This should be on News at Ten! We wait for the revelations of a lifetime.   

Our host is both charming and self-effacing as he strolls through the audience waiting for the dead to pounce. “Is there anyone here with the initial ‘A’?” he asks. After an embarrassing pause an “A” comes forward to learn that a dead relative is sorry for her difficulties. “Yes, I’ve been suffering from depression,” she tells us all. We sympathise. 

Then spirit after spirit of uncertain identity conveys a vague message to whoever owns up from the audience. Sometimes no-one from the floor recognises a loved one and we must assume the spirit concerned has lost the plot. 

Over the evening, nothing concrete is revealed and nothing persuades us, even for a moment, that Michael really is hearing from the dead... which is not surprising considering the science, but nevertheless disappointing, as isn’t this the point? 

Even when he veers off to the interpretation of dreams and responds to individual accounts of regular night fantasies, analysis is trite and unremarkable. “I dream about someone and shortly afterwards I hear that person has died,” says an audience member. “Ah, you have the gift!” is the quick and only response from Michael. 

What is of note in this ironically dispiriting occasion, is the willing acceptance of the audience who, in response to the most imprecise openers, happily pour out personal anecdotes about themselves and their dead loved ones in group therapy style. 

Many surprisingly came out satisfied: in some way they had temporarily mattered; in some way their grief had been allayed. But I felt they deserved better. It seemed almost like exploitation of well-meaning people looking only for comfort and validation. 

This was no awesome illusionist display or talented wizardry; this revealed only astute awareness on the part of the performer that people will clutch at straws. 

Clever audience manipulation, Stuart Michael, but somehow profoundly dishonest in motive.

On Tour. Details: psychicmedium.co.uk