The compere for the final show of FISM 2009 was Mike Caveney, who reminisced about past FISMs and did his Coffee juggling bit. Mike did a difficult job really well.
It fell to Mark Oberon to open the show. He gave us a flawless performance of his act. I was sitting with some Canadians and even they thought so!
Shawn Farquhar followed with his routine we saw on Wednesday. I had to agree with the Canadians he was also flawless. I felt Marc had done more magic, but you never know what the judges want! Whatever the outcome Marc had done British Magic and The Magic Circle, who sponsored him proud.
In the event Shawn won. Whilst I felt sorry for Marc I’ve seen Shawn come second in Stockholm after a mishap with a card load, so maybe it was his night! I lost the 1 yen bet (about 10p) I had with my Canadian friends!
The stage contestants followed. Yo Kato from Japan manipulated thimbles and wands in a fast paced, crowd pleasing act.
Soma from Hungary performed his telephone act next with the amazing rewinding restored newspaper. He got a great audience reaction. Then it was the turn of Han Seol-Hui of Korea with his amazing manipulation of CDs. The two juries left the theater to deliberate. They must have had an extremely difficult job in both close up and stage.
To keep us all amused whilst the Juries deliberated Topas and Roxanne presented four of their quality routines. First Topaz appeared from the “inflatable man” as performed in Britain at the Magic Circle Centenary and Blackpool. He followed with two new routines to me. The first a nice floating keyboard effect that turned into a self levitation. The second was a routine where a paper bag and a light bulb traveled to a glass box on the stage. A volunteer signed the bag and she then set fire to it. It vanished in a flash, only to appear inside the light bulb, in the box! The bulb was broken to recover the bag and check the signature. Topaz closed with his excellent “give me just one more” loudspeaker production, ending with the production of Roxanne.
Some Chinese acrobats followed. This time two ballet dancers, if you imagine a ballerina on point, and now imagine her, on point, on her partner’s head and you get the idea!
Topaz and Roxanne returned, this time with an effect involving a shower of foam. Topaz lost his head and restored it and girls appeared in the foam. It was clever and original!
The awards were presented by a Chinese minister for culture, before another Chinese minister made a speech. Eric Eswin thanked people, declared the convention closed, invited us all to meet in Blackpool in three years time. The glitter guns were fired and FISM was over for another three years.
Good News for Britain that Marc Oberon is the World Champion of Parlour Magic and the next FISM will be in the UK! Sad that Marc didn’t quite get the Grand Prix
You can see the Stage Grand Prix winner at the British Ring Convention in Southport!
The Chinese have done an amazing job with FISM. I’m glad I came.
Rocco presented a one man show this morning which was tour de force. He began with a video, showing how his different acts had developed the for almost an hour and a half he performed his classic routines including water to ice cubes and appearing and vanishing glasses of liquid.
