Review - Séance - Nicholas Wallace, Toronto

✭✭✭✭✩

by Nicholas Wallace, directed by Luke Brown

Nicholas Wallace, Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace, Toronto

September 29-October 11, 2015

“Who stole my heart away?

Who makes me dream all day?

Dreams I know can never come true

Seems as though I'll ever be blue.” (“Who?” by Jerome Kern, 1925)

Séance is a unique immersive experience that ever so subtly shifts from informative to amazing to truly frightening. Nicholas Wallace, who currently holds the title of Canadian Champion of Magic, begins the show in such a subdued, innocuous fashion, you have no idea what an emotional ride you will undergo. Since surprise is such an important factor in Séance, I will be able to write about it in only a very roundabout manner.

When you enter the Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace, only the group of about 35 chairs arranged in an oval in front of the stage provides any hint of what is to come. Otherwise, centre stage is occupied with something hidden under a sheet, stage right with an old Victrola playing a scratchy cowboy gospel song and stage left with a wooden case with a Victorian-style baby-sized doll. The audience sits behind the oval which is reserved for the séance itself.

From a distance Nicholas Wallace seems to be an ordinary, unassuming young man who looks like he dressed up in a tie and hard shoes just for the show. He is very well-spoken and could be a history nerd who has come to share his enthusiasm for the some of the odder aspects of late 19th- and early 20th-century spiritualism. Close up, however, Wallace’s calm voice has a commanding power and his eyes a distinctly penetrating gaze. He has a wonderfully innocent way of telling you to be calm that has just the opposite effect

The 80-minute-long show begins with Wallace polling the audience on who does or does not believe in life after death and who does and does not believe in ghosts. He then proceeds to deliver an illustrated lecture on the rise of spiritualism in the 19th century. He notes the paradox that the period known for the rise of scientific inquiry was also the period for a rise in the belief that people could make contact with the dead. He identifies the beginning of the spiritualist movement with the Fox sisters of New York who in 1848 began hearing mysterious rapping noises in their house and came to believe they were caused by spirits of the dead attempting to communicate with them. When they moved from the house the rappings moved with them and the sisters began to promote themselves as mediums.

He then tells us about the spirit photographer William H. Mumler who claimed to be able to take pictures of ghosts of the dead in the presence of the living people who knew them. His most famous photo was of Mary Todd Lincoln, who came to Mumler incognito but whose photo shows the ghost of her husband Abraham Lincoln embracing her. Although Mumler was exposed as a fraud, Wallace then shows us a series of photographs with ghostly images that have never been elucidated. He does mention the psychological concept of pareidolia or the tendency of the human brain to make sense of random patterns by turning them into a familiar form such as a face.

What is fascinating about Wallace’s lecture is that while he sets out to debunk the whole notion of spiritualism in seeking rational explanations for the phenomena people have experienced, the more he speaks of the subject the more unnerving it becomes. This primes us for his own stories of collecting objects that people have associated with the supernatural. One such object is a rocking chair, the object hidden under the sheet, that he acquired from a hotel in Belleville, now burned down, that was one said to be haunted.

Wallace asks if anyone would be willing to sit in the chair, selects a group from the few who raise their hands and then chooses one of these to occupy the chair. What happens once the person has relaxed into the chair with a black sack over the head is truly amazing. The subject appears to respond not merely to stimuli that are physical but also to those merely thought. As if that were not enough, the subject is asked to lie on the lid of a trunk. Incredibly, the lid remains just where it is in the air after the trunk itself is removed from beneath it.

From haunted object, Wallace proceeds methodically through other means people have used to communicate with the spirit world. One of these is the ouija board, invented in 1890 as a parlour game, but used from World War I onwards as a means of paranormal communication. Letters would be picked out using a planchette or an overturned wineglass. In the presence of a volunteer standing right next him, Wallace shows what a self-moving wineglass looks like.

Another means of paranormal communication was automatic writing. Again a volunteer from the audience is chosen and told to move the hand holding a pencil in whatever way it feels impelled. Incredibly, the scrawls begin to form words and begin to write words transmitted to the subject only by thought.

All of this prepares us for the climax of the evening – a real séance. The show is said to be the only one in the world to attempt to do this. What makes this séance unusual is that the medium is chosen from among the audience. First, Wallace asks for volunteers. Then of this group one is selected at random. She, the night I attended, then must sit on the infamous rocking chair covered with a lacy shawl in the midst of the oval of 35 or so audience members. The stage manager shuts down her booth and all electronics. Two volunteers block the light from the exit signs, one of Wallace’s assistants exits and literally locks us in the theatre and we sit in the oval, holding hands illuminated by only two candles.

This alone would be eerie enough for most people, but when Wallace begins to call upon the spirit of a child killed by a possible mass murderer in the previous century, things really start to become tense. I can’t reveal the events that transpire except to say that they are extremely unnerving. The woman whose hand I was holding nearly jumped out of her chair several times in fright. The conclusion of the séance is totally mind-boggling.

If you have always wanted to experience a séance the way they were done at the turn of the previous century, and perhaps even today, Nicholas Wallace’s Séance will give you that experience and more. The publicity for the show says it is recommended for those twelve years and older, but I would raise that age level to 17. While the illustrated lecture and initial illusions are informative and fun, the séance itself would have been too intense and disturbing for me were I only 12 years old. The show is also a no-go for anyone who is slightly skittish and especially for anyone with a fear of the dark. Wallace does offer those who feel too uncomfortable to join the séance the chance to leave just before the séance begins.

For those who stay, the experience is beyond anything you might expect. You will see why people as smart as Arthur Conan Doyle believed in them and why people as canny as P.T. Barnum sought to debunk them. In either case, you be in no doubt why Wallace at such a young age has won such high acclaim from his fellow magicians.

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

2015-10-01

Séance