Jasper Maskeleyne (The War Magician) and The Making of hit Fringe Show “The Trick That Fooled”
A brief look at one of the most intriguing magicians of the last 100 years through my own eyes, the eyes of a magician who attempted to replicated one of Maskelyne’s greatest ever illusions – making a tank appear!
It’s now been one full month since the close of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2021 and one month since the curtain went down on the premiere run of THE TRICK THAT FOOLED, my new magic show chronicling magic tricks that have fooled the smartest and most creative people ever to have lived.
Researching the show became a kind of lock down fixation! I spend 100s of hours reading articles that probably hadn’t been read in decades. I felt like I was uncovering the real secrets of magic!
From my show script:
“I was reading 100 year old newspaper articles, Magic Circle (ed – The famous secretive London based magic club – I’m a member don’t you know) minutes from 1908, chasing down long since out-of-print books by society magicians of the past. And in these pages I found some incredible magic, but also stories of some of the greatest minds from the last 100 years being fooled by magic tricks. But would these same tricks fool you?”
I unearthed some absolute gems – it appears the movement to have magic recognised as ‘an artform’ and not just some kind of ‘simple entertainment’ began long before I embarked upon the same battle! Also great to see that petty infighting at the Magic Circle was alive and well in 1905!
I also found some great stories related to magic – Winston Churchill, Amelia Earhart, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie.. The list goes on. But there was one story that didn’t quite fit the title and premise of my show – and that was the tale of Jasper Maskelyne, the man who ‘fooled the nazis’.
What an interesting chap. Very briefly, Maskelyne was perhaps the UK’s most famous magician in the 1930s. He signed up to the British Army at the start of World War II and is credited with having a hand in the success of a number of battles. What makes him interesting is that he used his skills as a magician to ‘fool the Nazis’ on a number of occasions. The full story I don’t want to recount, but if you go online and search for the book “The War Magician” then you’ll get the full picture. Completely unbiased. Ahem.
He was a second generation performer, which helps explain how he managed to become so successful so young, but was also, no doubt, very talented and creative in his own right. However when your dad is the best in the business you can certainly be shown the shortcuts to success. My dad wasn’t a magician, (unless you count being a fantastically gifted gardener as magical, and if you tasted my dad’s cherry tomatoes you’d probably think he was magic) far from it. I lost him recently, leaving a big hole in my life. That’s perhaps why as I got into understanding Maskeleyne’s motivations for my show; to do this I took to understanding the father-son relationship.
But perhaps this also explains that when he drew close to his forties he started to feel like he wanted more; to escape the shadow of his father and be remembered for his own unique story. Why he pushed so very hard to subscribe to the Army – he was initially rejected. That feeling of wanting to make your Dad feel proud of you is a very hard one to shake, even when you’re a grown man yourself. Stepping out of the shadow of a great man, and treading the path least taken, takes courage.
When I had the opportunity came to work with “Army at the Fringe” at the Fringe Festival back in May 2021 I realised now that I had motivation to go one step further with my intrigue into Maskeleyne. I now had a reason and funding to recreate one of his greatest illusions – making a tank appear!
As the story goes, Maskeleyne conjured up an entire tank battalion from northing more than wood and paint. Not a real one of course, but convincing enough to make the German commander Rommel change his battle plans and split his own battalion – ultimately resulting in a great victory for the Allies. This was the trick I wanted to replicate for my audience. In doing so, I had to think more deeply about what Maskeleyne did, how he did it and most importantly why. So without breaking my promise to the Magic Circle – and to keep the secrets – but also treating this in a grownup way let’s have a deeper look…
Illusion Design
We’ve all see it, girl goes into the box. Flash or light, bam! The box is opened and she’s gone! Many magicians are keenly aware how to fool the eye. Depth of field, viewing angle, brightness/contrast – magicians have a huge tool box of practical skills passed down through the generations. All of these could be extrapolated from a physics text book, (as an ex physicist I should know!) but the real secret lies in the practical application, the nuances in applying these principles in the real world. In this respect Magicians can be described as engineers. Taking the laws of the universe and applying them to practical real world problems.
One of the greatest challenges of illusion design is making an area with depth appear flat to the eye. Maskeleyne was an illusion builder. He had these skills at his disposal. To build an imitation tank he had to take this knowledge and reverse it, spin it 180, to make a flat area appear like it had depth. Suddenly a piece of ply wood could look like something completely different. In fact we see the same techniques used by creative street artists today.
Audience position
Angles – it’s all about the angle! How many times have I entered an unfamiliar theatre and cursed under my breath at the audience positioning! Best place is to have them right in front of you. All the (ahem) dodgy stuff can then be safely out of view. But sometimes you’re in a circus venue, or a Spiegeltent, or a planetarium… The audience are everywhere – and with precious time you have to make the calculations about how to make it work. To take seats off sale, to reposition props on stage… It’s very complicated, and very annoying. When on tour Maskeleyne would have been in this position too. But like any master magician he would have worked out the angle extremities in advance and would have prepared appropriately. In this battlefield scenario, he know his audience would be 10,000 ft in the air, flying at 800 mph, during daylight – we are of course talking about a German spy plane. This was his working angle, an acute one, from above. And when you think about it, it’s not too dissimilar to the angle and audience has of a magic show in an end-on theatre.
Shadows and Lighting
I once spent more than £1000 on a pair of lights that would be used for just 25 seconds in a show during a levitation. When you ‘levitate yourself’ you also remove the standard magician action of waving your hands above and below (no strings see!). Now it takes a few performances to notice, but without this gesture, the audience don’t really appreciate as much the levitation. They want proof. These lights were there to give the audience that proof. To sweep under me as I was 5 ft off the ground. Now I can’t take responsibility for working this out – why my audience were quieter than expected when I flew – but fortunately I also have a magician mentor who I turned to and who instantly recognised the problem. Maskeleyne’s lighting in this case would be the sun. And the sun would cast a shadow in a certain way at a certain time. Although this isn’t written about he must have observed the flight timing patterns of the German spy plan and worked out the likely shadowing at the time of day the plane would fly overhead. Without this, the illusion of the tank battalion would have been lost. They would have been seen for the two dimensional bits of wood they were and not the 3d menacing machines they were meant to be.
There are a few other aspects of the illusion design that I sadly can’t get into here without breaking Magic Circle rules. Let’s just say ‘smoke and mirrors’ isn’t just a phrase…
As always, learning the magic trick performed by these great magicians had a secondary effect. I was able to experience the trial and error, the learning experience, the performance experience that the historical magician had faced decades earlier. By not just reading about these incredible performers, but actually walking in their footsteps I got way closer to them than I could have imagined, and was able to wear their shoes so to speak. Interestingly my audiences tell me that they were able to get closer to their historical idols by sharing in the same sense of wonder that they experienced all those decades ago! What a lovely thing to have had happen!
With all this in mind, after much heartache, failure, prototypes being burned for being shit! – I was able to build my own life size tank, from wood and paint. I was able to hide it on stage and then magically make it appear for my audience at the right time.
How did it look? Well I’ve put a photo of my tank above, but if you want to see it appear? Well you’ll just have to buy tickets to my show! Check out my live dates in the menu above. 🙂
About the author:
Kevin Quantum is a performer, magic consultant and creative events producer. He is Director and founder of Edinburgh International Magic Festival and an in-demand magic consultant, magic performer and teacher to theatres, schools and arts organisations around Scotland, the UK and the world.
REVIEWS
https://theatreandartreviews.wordpress.com/2021/08/13/kevin-quantum-the-trick-that-fooled/
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“extremely impressive”
“outstanding magic”
“To watch and observe someone as charismatic and skilled in his performance is both impressive and entertaining. I found Quantum’s magic tricks incredible”
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“Quantum’s execution of his craft is still as smooth as can be”
“unfathomable levitation trick, a stunning routine”
“sheer entertainment, it’s that in an era of fake news even the smartest can be fooled.”
http://geekchocolate.co.uk/kevin-quantum-trick-fooled/
“bordering on the impossible”
https://theweereview.com/review/kevin-quantum-the-trick-that-fooled/
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“astonishing tricks by a man you’ll wish you’d had on hand to brighten up those long dark lockdown days.”
“all sorts of incredible”
“leave your disbelief at the front door and believe, for an hour at least, that magic is perfectly possible.”
