Alan Bates: Comedy Hypnotist

Last night a select hundred or so people braved the elements to make it to Alan Bates’s performance
at The Pleasance Theatre. From the murky darkness of a bitter Edinburgh Winter a curious and hopeful bunch waited with baited breath for his arrival. Neither they, nor I, were disappointed. The Performance was an unmitigated success, and I do hope that he is as good as his word and returns for Fresher’s Week 2012 so that others may get a chance to be as entertained as I was.

He opened by asking the audience to link their fingers together, and imagine them melding, unbreakably, together. Then those who felt their fingers had truly melted into one were asked to come up onstage; a brilliant way of selecting those who would be most susceptible to his hypnosis and who most wanted to be hypnotised. It was from those keen volunteers that he selected the seven people with whom he would work for the following hour or so.

This ‘work’ involved persuading that group that they had won the lottery, or had won it but were unable to speak or even stand from their chair, as if super-glued.The hilarity continued as he made the select seven believe that their shoes were phones...or the new fangled ‘i-shoe’ and that they were having a discussion with their favourite Hollywood celebrity.

The laughs were ceaseless and irresistible, may my shameless love of the Pleasance’s offerings never
fade.