Over the past year or so, I kept seeing video clips of Peter Antoniou — psychic comedian — come up on social media, and as I found him to be amazing and funny, when I saw that he would be coming to Toronto, I bought tickets for me and Dave (we're in the front row there). I bought the tickets months before my sister-in-law, Rudy, died, and while in the clips I have heard Antoniou say that he doesn't claim to speak to the dead, we couldn't help but hope that some kind of message would come through anyway. But, it turns out, it's not really that kind of show.
When we arrived, it was a little disappointing to see that Antoniou had a table where audience members fill out cards with their names, birthdates, and questions or stories for a psychic; all of the personal details that the clips make it look like he couldn't possibly know. But as the show started, and the comedy aspect was put into play, my disappointment faded — this is a highly entertaining show.
Early on, I was used in a gag — mostly to prove that Antoniou is more comedian than psychic — but when he started the mindreading part of the show, he proved to have serious mentalism powers, too. Yes, someone was no doubt feeding him the names and birthdays and details of each person he claimed had come to him, but based on the couple of lines each of them could have possibly fit onto the cards, Antoniou added impossible details to people's stories (live video feed of each subject of a reading in the audience showed every one of them amazed), and for those who had asked for advice, Antoniou's positions were always nuanced and supportive. And as everyone was obviously in on the trick of it, nothing felt manipulative.
Layer on snarky British humour and hilarious audience participation to Antoniou's mind picking skills, and Dave and I had a wonderful evening in the city. Just so much fun.
