CHRIS COX

Edinburgh 2007 Reviews.

What people say about Chris Cox performing Everything Happens For A Reason at the 2007 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

For 2006 - He Can't Read Minds reviews, click here.

Read press quotes and articles about Chris Cox

8th August 2007 - www.broadwaybaby.com

PURE MAGIC
Paying a second visit to the Fringe, Chris Cox is a contemporary mind reader who strips away all of the sinister nonsense that is often associated with the Derren Brown school of mentalisism, to show us that everything does, perhaps, happen for a reason.

Those that caught last year's run will see some familiar themes, and be delighted (horrified?) to know, the ferret is back! Cox chooses his victims with the help of a soft-toy ferret that the audience randomly throw between each other, making it impossible for him to use plants, and making his mind reading all the more impressive.

Throughout his hour on stage, Cox calls upon his audience members to make random choices, which he predicts the outcome of with scary accuracy. The show ends with a pre-recorded DVD, and gasps of amazement around the room.

His approach to mind reading and magic in general is very understated, and you can't help but just like the guy. It's little wonder why the show is already selling out over at the Gilded Balloon, so you should get a ticket fast before they've all gone. [Pete Shaw]

14th August 2007 - Edinburgh Evening News
**** - Reviewer: Drew McAdam
"Mesmorising Mind Reading"

THIS is a show that will change the way you think about your life. Cox's mind-reading performance is based on the premise that everything happens for a reason. And his argument is borne out by his demonstrations.

He takes the audience on a journey using subliminal messaging, suggestion, illusion and psychology. Along the way he performs a series of mind-tricks that culminates in a finale that Cox has predicted long before the audience even took their seats.

According to Cox, the momentary decisions that we take day in and day out shape our destinies.

From this simple basis, Cox has produced a string of remarkable demonstrations of how simple choices lead to an unexpected future. But more - he calculates how those changes can be predicted.

The audience is invited throughout the show to make a number of choices based on instinct and intuition. Yet Cox proves time and time again that these decisions were pre-determined.

And he does so using multi-media, flair, showmanship and a sprinkling of humour.

Despite the comedy and Cox's high-energy level, the audience is left wondering what would have happened had his predictions been wrong. As Cox himself explains, the show would finish a few minutes early. Each individual would therefore be in a different place: at a different time. That two minutes would alter their destiny forever. This is a mesmerising performance that entertains and educates - mind-reading with a message.

13th August 2007 - www.one4review.com
****

As Chris Cox points out the title if this show gives him a get-out clause should any of his performance go wrong as ‘Everything Happens For A Reason’. Luckily Cox never has to invoke this phrase seriously throughout his show as he is truly a master of his art.

To explain a bit more about his art – Chris Cox is a mind-reader who cannot read minds, however he can plant suggestions in order to get the required result. A bit like Derren Brown, only far less sinister.

Cox is an endearing presence on stage and his line in self-deprecating humour allows the audience to empathise with him. The art of putting you at your ease is a pertinent one as there is every chance that you may be called upon at any time to participate in his act.

Through the sheer act of catching a cuddly ferret I found myself up on stage where Cox managed to ‘read my mind’ successfully. It was very impressive and I genuinely have no idea how he did it. Maybe whilst I was up there he planted the suggestion that I should give him a good review, but he needn’t have bothered. This is a low-key show which is thoroughly engrossing and quite, quite gobsmacking.
FOUR STARS

20th August 2007 - Hairline
By Martin Miller
****

Chris Cox, to those who listen to Radio 1, will be well known as the station’s resident magician, but Cox is eager to prove that magic has nothing to do with it. Mixing magic tricks with psychology, technology and comedy he amazes the audience throughout the frantic hour.

Holding a stuffed toy ferret, he throws it into the unsuspecting crowd and those unlucky enough to catch it are selected as his volunteers. Like a stripped bare Darren Brown he looses all the magician pomp and instead explains his psychological assessments of the situation. Take for example a man who has taken the ace of diamonds from a pack of cards. Using a technique known as positive reinforcement and combining it with the process of elimination, Chris Cox is able to analyze exactly when his volunteer is lying and slowly work out the correct card. Moments like this are thrilling to watch and surprisingly gripping.

The show zips along at a great speed and there are some delightful touches peppered throughout. Using a DVD player on a timed loop he is able to introduce new tricks and continue conversations with himself via the screen.

Entertaining and thought-provoking, do your best to grab a ticket.

FOUR STARS

6th August 2007 - www.notbbc.com
Chris Cox
Everything Happens for a Reason
Guilded Balloon Teviot
6:30pm until 27th August (except 14th)

Chris Cox will most certainly be sold out. Let me begin with a couple of caveats. Firstly, I hadn’t planned on seeing this show. Not at all. I didn’t know anything about Chris Cox. His magical comedy show had totally bypassed my radar, and I hadn’t turned down the corner of his page in my Fringe guide. No highlighter pen marks at all (yes, I am that anal – it’s a military operation this Fringe malarkey). Well, ok, I’d clocked his promo flyer, but that was it. A few hours before, as luck would have it (or was it luck?) I was given a ticket to see Chris’s show Everything happens for a reason. Given the opportunity and a rare gap in my show-viewing schedule, I went along and clearly everything does happen for a reason because I was really glad I did. The second is this. As well as comedy I love magic. I am a passionate fan of the enigmatic Derren ’Olivier-award-winning’ Brown (I believe now that to be his full and proper title). I think it is because I know that he knows I know he isn’t from some other dimension, but that through meticulous planning, practise and preparation alongside the application of logic, reason, psychology, mind-reading, sleight of hand, illusions and showmanship, ‘magic’ can take place right in front of our apparently conscious noses while our subconscious serves to collude and implicate.
Gentle NOTBBC reader, bear with me. This IS a review for Chris Cox . I bet he gets well narked with the comparison, but that should be all the more flattering for Chris. Derren Brown clearly has some serious competition. The thing that unnerves me about the Brown is a personal thing that says more about me and my neuroses than the professionalism of Brown - I don’t like hypnotism. It makes me feel vulnerable, like someone could make even more of a public arse of me than I am quite capable of making in a conscious state all by my very self thanking you kindly. Chris Cox is a magician of similar calibre who doesn’t use hypnotism and puts audience member at their ease which is good for anyone who holds a similar disposition as I felt less likely to walk out – which, believe me I am more than ready to do at the drop of a magician’s rabbit-filled hat. Chris is hugely talented, a fine and funny entertainer and definitely one to watch out for.

Everything happens for a reason is a mesmerising hour long journey. There is a lot of audience participation. Don’t let this put you off. Again, let me reveal my cowardly nature by stating that given a split second chance, I will be out of a room quicker than a magician can say ‘can I have a volunteer ….’ . As a rule of thumb, I hate audience participation. If I’m not getting paid to take part or get billing / acknowledgement for my part in the performance then I’ll go elsewhere where I can sit back and relax thank you very much. I hate it with as much venom as I hate audiences clapping along to music. Yet Chris somehow makes any anxieties vanish. Don’t let the act of youthful self-deprecation fool you. Just as Les Dawson’s professional pianist skills allowed him to hit duff notes, and Tommy Cooper misdirected through mishap and gags, you are left pondering on every small incident and moment of Chris’s show with the unanswered inner certainty that every and I mean every moment has been carefully crafted and orchestrated in order to fall into a masterly show, deftly executed with charm, modesty, and self-effacement. If things don’t go quite as he’d hoped, then he’s also got a failsafe cover: everything happens for a reason, right? Clever …. Chris Cox is absolutely fantastic. Just watch out for low flying ferrets.
(Note: No ferrets are hurt during the making of the show)

August 2007 - The Stage (2006 Must See Show)

Chris Cox - Everything Happens for a Reason

Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh

The title and some of the banter are different, but essentially this is the same must see act magician-mentalist Chris Cox brought to Edinburgh last year. His stock in trade is to appear to know in advance what card a member of the audience will pick or what word he will choose from a book, since Cox will have the answer already written somewhere. Among the previously seen tricks are the circled word in the Fringe brochure already printed on Cox’s T-shirt, the audience member’s drawing he can duplicate without having seen it, and the collection of audience suggestions for film credits that magically appear on a DVD that has been held by one patron from the beginning.

Cox acknowledges that these are all tricks, built on subliminal suggestions, sleight-of-hand and the reading of unconscious giveaways by his volunteers, but if anything that only adds to his impressiveness, since we are clearly in the hands of a master technician. Also contributing to the show’s fun is his amiable informality - he chooses volunteers by tossing a toy ferret into the audience - and complete absence of the traditional magician’s false pomposity and flashiness.

13th August 2007 - ThreeWeeks
***

You'll definitely get to put a face to the voice you occasionally hear discussing magic tricks on Radio 1. But will you get an hour of hysterical laughter? Perhaps not. But Chris Cox's magic tricks are good fun, and went well for the most part, with our host correctly guessing the cards random audience members had picked out. And I especially like the way those random audience members were picked - a stuffed ferret in a jumper is thrown into the audience and the trick begins where he lands. It's a system that caused some extra amusement, especially when the ferret hit people on the head. Unfortunately on this night Cox's last trick fell slightly flat as the ferret-selected people didn't choose exactly what he'd subliminally hinted at. But nonetheless, this was good natured family entertainment presented by a likeable young man with obvious talent.

7th August 2007 - The Herald - ***

Despite the fact he is associated with Chris Moyles's Radio 1 breakfast show, there is a great deal to like about Chris "The Magician" Cox, whose show is driven by auto suggestive promptings than blinding illusion.

A slick bit of video introduces our fresh-faced host, who by his own admission looks potentially a decade younger than his 24 years. He immediately gets among his intimate audience to establish the principle of participation.

His device for doing so is the ferret of fate, a cute, cuddly bean-bag creature which gets tossed around the room like a rowing boat in a force-10 gale.
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A swift calculation of how many people are in the audience divided by the number of times this happens reconciles you to the fact that the chances of avoiding getting dragged on stage are minimal - and so it proves.

Up close, Chris still looks terrifyingly young, but commands his stage like an old hand guiding the stooge into the correct position for the illusion. To be honest, it still just feels like being the victim of a very slick school prank.

Altogether more impressive is the show's finale, where Cox is so certain of subliminally influencing his crowd to say what he wants them to say, it has been recorded on DVD.

What he does is technically very impressive, yet the way he does it would benefit from a little more mystique, a whole lot more showmanship and less rearranging of furniture on stage.

All content ©2007 Chris Cox / Big Cox Productions, all rights reserved. Please note that this website is nothing to do with the BBC and is not endorsed by it in anyway.
"One of the most exciting entertainers in Britain." The Guardian
"Does tricks that would make Jesus proud. Very funny." Time Out
"He has taken mind magic to new levels...You'll laugh your head off while still being blown away" Metro