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The Prestige

“Every great magic trick consists of three acts. The first act is called “The Pledge”; The magician shows you something ordinary, but of course… it probably isn’t. The second act is called “The Turn”; The magician makes his ordinary some thing do something extraordinary. Now if you’re looking for the secret… you won’t find it, that’s why there’s a third act called, “The Prestige”; this is the part with the twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance, and you see something shocking you’ve never seen before.”

And that’s what The Prestige is all about.

As with most shows that I truly like, I find it hard to express in words why I find it so great…but I’ll give it a go…

First off…Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale gave great performances as Rupert Angier and Alfred Borden respectively. Hugh Jackman always does brilliantly in period dramas (Kate and Leopold!) and he doesn’t disappoint in this show. His portrayal as a man obsessed to find out the secret of Borden’s “The Transported Man” and to even the score between himself and Borden is brilliant. You can literally see him spiralling down towards this dark, grim path of revenge. Bale, as Borden, is the opposite…he’s suave and secretive throughout the whole show, and almost cold at certain points, but always in control of himself. And Sir Michael Caine provides the balance in the show as Cutter, who tries, and fails to keep Angier in check.

The storyline is simple. A magic trick goes wrong, and starts off a rivalry between the two magicians which at first, just consists of Angier, the showman of the two, trying to upstage Borden, the one with the true talent. But when Borden comes up with “The Transported Man”, a trick that Angier just can’t figure out, that’s when things turn darker. Angier launches into an obsessive journey to figure out the secret behind the trick, which leads him from London all the way to Colarado in search for the scientist, Nikola Tesla, whom he is convinced can help him figure out the mechanics of the trick. However, what he finds is something more unexpected, and that enables his comeback in London with a brand ‘new’ trick…”The Real Transported Man”. But then, things go wrong, and Borden is implicated in Angier’s death during the performance of his latest trick.

I can’t say more about the show without giving too much away, but I’ll say this: The whole show unfolds like a magic trick. Thinking back, it’s all about misdirection. But if you’re like me, you’d only realize it after the show ends and your mind starts sifting through the scenes (hubby claims to have figured it all out much earlier…*grin*). But then again, maybe that’s why I like this show so much…I like being misdirected, and I like the surprise at the end when all is revealed. And very much like The Sixth Sense, once the secret is revealed, you’ll start thinking back over the scenes in the show and realized that there were many many clues all over, but somehow, you just didn’t see it!

Many have compared this show to The Illusionist and most reviews have said that this show is much better. Well, I didn’t watch The Illusionist, but I have to agree that this is a great show. Do watch and judge it for yourself…just don’t try to find plot holes when you leave the cinema, as with most of these type of shows, there’s bound to be some! As for me, methinks I’m gonna go buy the book tomorrow…