I'm sitting here at my computer, the morning after the night before of Eurovision and it feels like the perfect moment to reflect on seeing Norvil & Josephine: Rabbits Out of the Hat at Jacksons Lane, in Highgate. A family show that serves up sequins and secrets, the politics of identity, and a good old-fashioned flourish of panache: who could ask for anything more?!
The show is set up as a Edwardian magic act. Brother and sister, Norvil and Josephine, are auditioning for the chance to upgrade their act to the Egyptian Hall. Norvil is the top-hat-and-handlebar-moustache magician of the old school, all Atlantic vowels and masterly self-importance. Josephine is his mischievous sister, officially the assistant, unofficially the far more interesting one: fed up with standing to the side, fired up by the suffragette moment, and increasingly unwilling to remain straightjacketed by family expectations that "assistants assist" and nothing more.
But very quickly, as you might hope from a magic show, it becomes clear that all is not quite what it seems. Norvil keeps sneaking little moments with a pair of pink sequinned dancing shoes (vive la vie en rose, douze points!) and the show begins to slip deliciously from period pastiche into something more tender: a story about transformation, mischief, self-revelation, and the long, glittery business of becoming who you actually are.
I know Christopher Howell from two clowning workshops about a decade ago led by Ira Seidenstein, formerly Cirque du Soleil and Slava's Snowshow, as eloquent as he is funny, the Woody Allen of clowning. The last time I saw Ira I was en famille, in Brisbane, having swapped out my circus journey for a sailing sabbatical, navigating our way from France to Australia on our catamaran La Cigale, which now feels like another lifetime ago. I had come across Desireé Kongerød through her pairing up with Chris and mostly through social media. She has that sort of positive energy that radiates through her account, and through that knew of her expertise in a variety of disciplines: comedy, contortion, stilt-walking... I had also long wanted to see her 1920s-style butterfly dance, which in this show was simply beautiful: delicate, playful, precise, and full of that odd stage quality that feels both technically controlled and completely free.
What I had forgotten was what a fantastic singer Chris is. There is something particularly lovely about being surprised by someone you know. His Norvil is comic, pompous, vulnerable and increasingly undone by the thing he is trying hardest to hide. The singing adds another layer entirely, as it did with Michael Twaits in Cupid's Cabaret (see previous post): suddenly the moustache and the patter give way to something more exposed, and the old-school magician becomes a person with a secret dream.
There is a politics to the piece, but not the sort that thumps you over the head with its own virtue. It is there in the structure of the act: who gets to stand centre stage, who is expected to smile and disappear, who is allowed ambition, who is allowed flamboyance, who gets billed first, who gets the applause. Josephine wants the power and agency of the magician, not just the spangled peril of the assistant. Norvil, meanwhile, is trapped by a different but related expectation: masculinity as top hat, control, command voice and stiff upper lip, when what he really longs for is pink shoes and a tap routine. The show understands that liberation is not a tidy business. It often looks ridiculous before it looks brave. It may involve a wig, a reveal, a wrong-footed sibling and a lot of sequins.
One of my favourite moments was the levitating table, which drifted so alarmingly out of control into the audience that you genuinely forgot to wonder how it was being done — which is of course precisely the point. And then there was the Sword of Glorious Repute, deployed against the Klimt cabinet with magnificent ceremony. I love that kind of theatrical double-cross. It plays so neatly with the contract between magician and audience: we know we are being tricked, we want to be tricked, and yet we are still delighted when the trick turns out to have been hiding somewhere else entirely. It also speaks to the deeper rhythm of the show. The thing you think is being revealed is not always the thing that matters. The real transformation is happening elsewhere, just out of sight, until suddenly it isn't.
And then there was Jacksons Lane itself.
"Oh, Jacksons Lane, Mum. It just makes me so nostalgic. It was my childhood really."
My youngest daughter is now fourteen, the worldly age my mother was when she realised she knew everything about life. That strange transition year into adulthood, when childhood is still close enough to touch but already slightly embarrassing. As we got out at Highgate tube, we both sighed. The tree tunnel was still there, and we raced each other up the steep steps to the main road. Catherine hadn't been to Jacksons Lane since we got back from our sailing trip, and she was reassured to discover that despite the external changes from the millions of pounds revamp, the new entrance, the enlarged café, the auditorium still felt like itself, new seats aside. There is something very powerful about returning to a place where your children were once small. You sit there with the teenager beside you, both of you pretending to be composed, while the walls quietly remember everything.
I had explained to Catherine that the show was a family show, but it was only when we entered the foyer and she saw the demographic that she fully took it in. But I reframed it quickly: we were here to see performers I knew thanks to my circus journey and, the big reveal, I had booked seats right at the back where we could slide in surreptitiously. I thanked the theatre gods. I had booked at the last minute, the last available seats, and having misread the layout thought we were right at the front. Rin really would have killed me. As it was, she relaxed. And I trusted Norvil and Josephine to do the rest.
On stage was a classic magician's set: props, velvet and gilt edges, the promise of danger yet all shall be well, with a splendidly decorated cabinet waiting for the inevitable woman-in-a-box business - a beautiful object waiting to be cut, contained, transformed and escaped from. Very Klimt-matic indeed.
The show has the generous, handmade quality of the best family theatre: the sense that adults have been taken seriously as audience members too, and that children are being trusted with more than noise and bright colours. There is comedy, magic, music, audience participation, and a lovely line in vaudevillian silliness. But underneath it all is something real about performance and permission. Who are we allowed to be? Who decided? How long do we have to keep assisting in someone else's act before we build our own?
By the end, Catherine was totally immersed. We both were. Magic, like clowning, has the potential to be embarrassing until it works on you. Then you remember that delight is not actually childish. It is just something teenagers have to pretend not to recognise for a while.
For me, the joy of Norvil & Josephine lay in its mixture of craft and heart: Desireé's luminous physicality, Chris's comic precision and vocal richness, the affection between the characters, the theatrical cleverness of the reveals, and the sheer visual pleasure of it all. It is a show with all that glitters, yes, but also with a quietly radical little pulse beating under the waistcoat.
Sequins and panache. Norvil's secret dream, whispered at first, then claimed out loud, centre stage, unapologetically. We could all do with a little more of that in life.
Not tonight, Josephine?
Oh, I think very much tonight.
Norvil & Josephine are on tour throughout the summer, from King's Lynn to Exeter, Bath, Farnham, Stratford-upon-Avon, Twickenham and culminating at the Ventnor Festival on the Isle of Wight at the end of July. Click here for their website and full tour dates as they have a packed summer ahead and well worth catching.
There was another magic moment afterwards in the foyer of Jacksons Lane, this one unrehearsed. As we made our way out, I found Chris chatting with Sonia Benito, a magician I had last seen when she performed in the Shhh! cabaret (see post - click here). We met originally having trained together at Freedom2Fly at the Hive in Hackney Wick, part a family of aerialists brought together by Jair and Jess, who have since taken their magic to New Zealand, leaving a gap that neither of us has since filled. Now in May, I'm reminded that used to be the month of the F2F pull-up challenge. Six was my maximum. I couldn't do even one now.
But maybe I'll work on it now...
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