Klok serves up his own take on Houdini’s famous water-tank escape, and throws in illusions of his own in this energetic two-and-a-half-hour show.

“He took all of his secrets to his grave, so in this show I challenge some of his illusions by making them more dangerous, updating them for the time we live in.” The other storyline is about Houdini, the greatest magician of all time,“ he says enthusiastically. “I am lost in a time-machine and end up in the time of the pirates and the 17th century. And with that, the audience should expect a big Las Vegas-style plot to boot. “It is a big Las Vegas-type show with a story,” he tells us. The centre of the show is Klok, who masterminds everything – with the aid of a diamond-encrusted wardrobe of various cuts. The Houdini Experience is a time-travel dream-shaped journey through magic, stunts and circus acts that scores some serious kitsch kudos with its rag-tag collection of tricks, as well as dancers, acrobats and contortionists. But no one’s told Klok, who delivers the sort of family-friendly, rapid-fire, all-dancing showmanship which many might With the rise of illusionists such as Derren Brown, simple tricks don’t fool us anymore. There was even a theatre here, The Egyptian Hall, especially built for magic and mystery shows,” he says.ĭespite this, magicians as popular entertainers are not what they once were, either in famed escapologist Harry Houdini’s time, or even 15 years ago. “It’s good to have the show in London because 100 years ago it was the biggest city in the world for magic. London is, in many respects, the home of magic as a large crowd performance show – something Klok, a performer with 25 years’ experience and a six-month-running Las Vegas show, The Beauty Of Magic, under his belt, knows. It’s a style designed for the stage and for performance, and so it couldn’t be more suited to its owner, the energetic, acrobatic, Dutch magician, who brings his circus-cum-magic show The Houdini Experience to the capital for a five-week run. A blond mane of epic proportions that’s halfway between an Eighties Duran Duran video and Mufasa from The Lion King.

The first thing you notice about Hans Klok, the “fastest magician in the world“, is his hair.

Houdini's magic shop caesars palace