Theatre / Mind Mangler

Mind Mangler: Member of the Tragic Circle is a play by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields. They are all part of the Mischief Theatre company.

The eponymous mind reader from Magic Goes Wrong returns to the stage following a disappointing two-night run at the Luton^note or Scranton, PA in the off-Broadway production Holiday Inn conference center, suite 2b. His new two-man show is predicted to spiral into chaos as he attempts to read the audience's minds... with disastrous results.

The play initially premiered as a one-act show at the 2022 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, with a two-act version touring the UK from November 2022 to April 2023, and again from March to June of 2024. It played off-Broadway under the title Mind Mangler: A Night of Tragic Illusion from November 2023 to January 2024.

Tropes featured in Mind Mangler include:

• Acquired Error at the Printer: According to the Mind Mangler, the show's title is a typo, as he's supposed to be a member of the magic circle.^note Off-Broadway, he's supposed to provide a night of magic illusion.This wasn't the first time this happened, either, as the printing company he uses is run by his ex-wife's sister, resulting in such show titles as:
  • Mind Mangler: Mentalist At Large^{printed as...}Mind Mangler: Mentalist Who Is Large
  • Mind Mangler: An Evening of Wonder^{printed as...}Mind Mangler: An Evening of Wanker
  • Mind Mangler: The Grand Illusion^{printed as...}Knob (or, in the off-Broadway production, Dick)
• Audience Participation: Throughout the show, multiple audience members are called upon to either provide suggestions from the stalls or come up on stage as volunteers. Almost none of these go the way the Mind Mangler expected.
  • His first trick involves "tasting" someone's first name, writing it down, and asking that person for their name. Unfortunately, he always writes "John", so when the first audience member inevitably has a different name, he has to awkwardly ask "Are there any John's in?"
  • This can also occur during his "smell people's jobs" routine if an audience member he picks is retired, a student, or otherwise unemployed.
  • Some of the show's tricks are set up to avert Audience Participation Failure, as at least two members are instructed by the crew to give specific responses to the Mangler's questions.
    • When the Mangler asks an audience member to guess what color he wrote down, said audience member was told in advance what the color would be. He was also told to say his name is John.
    • During the Off with His Head! trick mentioned below, one of the audience members is instructed to just spin their lock randomly, and to say they don't remember the combination when the Mangler asks for it.
• Broken Echo: The Mangler has a sound cue set up where whenever he says the word "mind", the word echoes a few times... with a voice that sounds nothing like him. Unfortunately, the echo keeps going off when it's not supposed to, much to his frustration. And before his last trick, when he actually wants the echo to play, it doesn't work, and the audience trying to produce the echo themselves doesn't help.
  Mind Mangler: What a load of shit.
  Echo: Shit...shit...shit...shit...
• Bungled Hypnotism:
  • The Mangler attempts to mass-hypnotize the audience into falling asleep on cue. When this doesn't work, he tries to use sleeping gas on them... but it's been swapped out with fog machine fog.
  • He then tries to "hypnotize" his stooge into falling asleep, but ends up hypnotizing himself instead. The stooge then encourages the audience to take this opportunity and have the Mangler make certain animal noises on cue, as well as providing cues for him to say an embarrassing fact about himself, and for him to give someone £20.^note This last cue was cut from the off-Broadway production.
• Disappearing Box: The Mind Mangler planned to end Act 1 with this trick, hoping to disappear from inside a glass box in a puff of smoke. Unfortunately, the glass box was destroyed, so the theatre lent him one of their ice cream freezers^note drink fridge filled with Mountain Dew in the off-Broadway production... on the condition that he doesn't unplug it or remove any of the inventory. And to cap it off, the fog machine fog had been swapped out with the sleeping gas meant for his hypnosis act.
• Limey Goes to Hollywood: The Mangler attempts this in-universe, as he claims to have scored a gig in Las Vegas ^note Sydney, Australia in the off-Broadway production. Unfortunately, his stooge never mailed his application for a performer visa.
• Market-Based Title: Because Magic Goes Wrong, where the Mind Mangler originated from, has not premiered in the US as of January 2024, this show's subtitle was changed to A Night of Tragic Illusion for the off-Broadway run to clarify that it's a magic show.
• Off with His Head!: The Mangler's last trick, where he has to attempt to escape a guillotine by unlocking combination locks set by the audience members. Unfortunately, one of the audience members forgot the combination they set.
• Phony Psychic: ZigZagged. On one hand, it's obvious a lot of his tricks exhibit this trope. On the other hand, there are moments in the show where he does show actual talent, such as accurately guessing secrets, successfully reassembling a torn-up newspaper, and inadvertently bending a mic stand and lighting truss with his mind.
• Rubik's Cube: International Genius Symbol: The Mangler opens Act 2 with a trick involving this.
  • He starts the routine by "solving" a cube.^i.e.secretly swapping a jumbled one with one that's already been solved in his jacket pocket
  • During the interval, audience members were invited on stage to grab a Rubik's Cube, jumble it, and set it in a grid. The Mangler then invites a few more audience members to jumble any cubes that weren't filled in, as well as write a word to be drawn at random. He'd then flip the grid around to show that the colored squares formed an image of himself, along with the word he's drawn (usually something insulting like "TOSSER" or "ASSWIPE").
• Shell Game: The Mangler invites the audience to play 3 rounds of one, where each have a chance to win a 20 pound (or dollar) note in one of 3 glasses. The first two audience members will always get the right glass, while the third will always get it wrong, as the note teleported back into the Mangler's wallet. In the UK, however, his stooge will honk a horn after the last round, prompting the Mangler to give away the note anyway.
• Smart People Play Chess: One of the Mangler's tricks involves playing chess against a supercomputer with the aid of four brains, each one belonging to someone of great intelligence. He loses in four moves.
  Mind Mangler: Right, we'll call that a draw.
• Spoon Bending: The Mangler attempts this, but after about a minute of trying, he ends up bending a microphone stand and a lighting truss instead.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: The first three times the Stooge comes on as an "audience volunteer", he tries to reduce suspicions of him being a stooge by wearing a shirt that says "AUDIENCE MEMBER", then "DIFFERENT AUDIENCE MEMBER", and finally "THIRD AUDIENCE MEMBER (WITH GLASSES)".
• Visual Pun: At one point during his hypnosis routine, the Mangler attempts to give an order to his "hypnotized" stooge by shouting "Mike! Stand!" Cue a crew member setting a microphone stand on the stage.
• Walk on Water: One of the Mangler's "Quick Fire Jesus" tricks has him do this.^i.e.walking on top of bottles of water