Peter Viney's Blog

By David Haig

Directed by Lucy Bailey
Designed by Joanna Parker
Illusion designer John Bulleid
Composer Orlando Gough

World Premiere

Chichester Festival Theatre
Saturday 2nd May 2026, 14.30

CAST
David Haig – Arthur Conan Doyle
Hadley Fraser- Harry Houdini
Jenna Augen – Bess Houdini
Ben Jones – Dr Crandon / Troupe
Claire Price – Jean Conan Doyle
Marc Serratosa- Troupe
Ella Tekere- Troupe
François Testory- Troupe
Jade Williams – Mina Crandon / Troupe
Kristin Wei Wong- Troupe

David Haig is both writer and co-lead actor, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Chichester Festival Theatre has a curved stage with a long gap to the audience. We booked this one early, and got the front row. But there was another front row tight up to the stage with old fashioned seats.

We wondered why, and soon found out. It looks like a theatre from the rest of the Chichester auditorium, more importantly in the opening scene Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Lady Jean Doyle occupy the seats at one end, and Houdini and his wife Bess occupy the seats at the other end later. The gap between audience and stage would otherwise be too wide. In fact one or two interchanges were conducted between our row and the ‘new row’ and I have to say that having David Haigh and Hadley Fraser acting full on about two feet away from you is an exciting experience.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini were a mutual admiration society. Houdini collected Conan Doyle’s books, especially Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle was fascinated by Houdini’s “magic.” It’s the 1920s. Conan Doyle believed passionately in spiritualism, and that mediums could contact the dead. I suspect that the now ubiquitous ‘passed over’ or ‘passed away’ replacing ‘died’ either comes from Greek myths (the boatman and the River Styx) or from the mass enthusiasm for spiritualism in the early 2oth century. The peak was after World War One, when virtually everyone had lost a relative, and Conan Doyle had lost his son, Kingsley. However, Conan Doyle had been espousing spiritualism since 1887. He was passionate about it, which is at loggerheads with his qualifications in both medicine and physics.

The play starts with a Houdini show, the escape from handcuffs while suspended upside down on a rope. The physical strength Hadley Fraser as Houdini had to employ this was astonishing. I bought the play text, and I have to say that the opening illusion that David Haig had envisaged, involving a straitjacket and a coffin, must have proved beyond their capabilities.

Houdini and Conan Doyle shared a love of sport, especially boxing. Their first meeting is backstage with their wives. Jenna Augen as Bess Houdini is the perfect Brooklyn product, while Claire Price as Jean Conan Doyle exudes a genteel and refined ambience. A highlight is when Bess acts out a Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson meeting “woid for woid.”

Jenna Augen as Bess Houdini, Claire Price as Lady Jean Conan Doyle

It all starts so well, and they get on immediately, and even more so when the Conan Doyles visit Houdini’s library of spiritual and magic texts in the USA.

It starts to go wrong. Houdini keeps buttoned up about mediums and seances. He believed mediums were fakes and as the world’s greates illusionist was intent on proving that they too were illusionists.

Eventually Conan Doyle toured advocating communion with the dead, while Houdini toured announcing that it was all a fake. They fell out, and violently.

We see seances. Jean believes herself a medium (or does she?) but mainly they’re interested in Mina Crandon (Jade Williams)s, the greatest medium of her day, who works with the help of Dr Crandon (Ben Jones). Her speciality is doing the voice of her spirit guide, her dead brother Walter with a loud gruff male voice, then doing the voice of the one who is coming through. In the first one, Conan Doyle os covinced it’s his son, Kingsley. In a later one she tries to channel Houdini’s dear departed mom, which is when it all goes wrong.

In the last seance, Houdini exposes them, and there is an extremely violent confrontation with her being thrown around, and then screaming anti-Semitic abuse at Houdini. Incidentally, the Oedipal word, let’s not be mealy-mouthed, it’s ‘motherfucker,’ was first recorded in a Texas trial in 1889. I checked. My initial thought is it sounds 1960s rather than 1920s, but I’m sure David Haig had done his research. When Mina totally freaks out, is a fantastic performance.

Conan Doyle’s belief is unshakeable. Even after Houdini explains how he does one of his great illusions, walking through a solid brick wall, Conan Doyle still insists that Houdini must dematerialise (as in ‘Beam me up, Scotty!) and re-materialise, and that the “trick” element is merely kept for days when he’s tired.

David Haig’s performance is poignant, reflected against Houdini’s wish not to hurt him, but his insistence on seeking the truth. Much of this is Hadley Fraser using facial expression.

The direction by Lucy Bailey impressed me, especially the use of the ‘Troupe’ as it calls them in the programme. At points, Jade Williams and Ben Jones also join the troupe. They can be chorus girls, housemaids at the Conan Doyle mansion, journalists observing the controlled Houdini seance. The use of projection, always in black and white adds … the Queen Mary transatlantic, part of Houdini’s library, the window in the Conan Doyle’s house.

They cover scene changes on the revolve stage at Chichester, and add piano, clarinets, accordion and tambourine. There’s constant and meaningful movement between the main interactions.

David Haig was interviewed by The Guardian as the play was about to start its run:

You might expect modern audiences to be wholly on Houdini’s side. But Conan Doyle will be played by Haig himself, who as an actor has won the nation’s heart with all his buttoned-up bureaucrats and establishment Englishmen struggling to keep their upper lip stiff. It’s crucial, he tells me, that audiences sympathise with Conan Doyle, and don’t see his faith as an object of ridicule. “He was seeking a religion that was scientifically based. At the time, it was thought that electromagnetism might absolutely be a means to contact the dead. That may now seem ludicrous, but the energy of Conan Doyle’s optimism was always engaging. Hopefully there are lots of laughs in the play, but one of the great challenges is to ensure that element is not played as comedy.”
Brian Logan interview, The Guardian 20 April 2026

Reactions? A lot will depend on personal reactions to spiritualism. Houdini successfully exposes Mina Crandon, but then the ending, where Kingsley and Sir Arthur are on opposite sides of a wall, suggest that it may give genuine solace, whether it’s fake or not.

The direction and performance are superb. There is a lot of gentle humour too. We discussed it at length. Karen felt she was fascinated, impressed by the acting, illusion and direction, but never felt emotionally engaged. She was three star. I’m four star, and I do the typing out.

****

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
No reviews were up when we saw it and when this was written

LINKS ON THIS BLOG

DAVID HAIG (writer)
Pressure, London West End 2018

DAVID HAIG (actor)
Pressure, London West End 2018
King Lear – David Haig Bath Theatre Royal
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Old Vic, 2017
Racing Demon, Bath Theatre Royal 2017
Downton Abbey (film) 2019

LUCY BAILEY
Titus Andronicus, The Globe
The Taming of The Shrew, RSC 2012
The Winter’s Tale, RSC 2013
Fortune’s Fool, The Old Vic, 2014
The Importance of Being Earnest (Bunbury Players) 2014
King Lear, Bath 2013
Comus, by John Milton, Wanamaker Playhouse 2016
Switzerland by Joanna Murray Smith, Bath Ustinov 2018
The Other Boleyn Girl, by Mike Poulton, Chichester 2024

HADLEY FRASER
Opening Night, Ivo van Hove, Gielgud London 2024
The Deep Blue Sea, Chichester 2019
The Winter’s Tale, Kenneth Branagh Company 2015
Harlequinade by Terence Rattigan, Kenneth Branagh Company 2015
Coriolanus, NT Live

JENNA AUGEN
Kyoto, RSC 2024
Leopoldstadt, Tom Stoppard, 2020

BEN JONES
The Other Boleyn Girl, by Mike Poulton, Chichester 2024
The Tempest, Bath Ustinov 2022

CLAIRE PRICE
Measure For Measure, RSC 2019
The Taming of The Shrew, RSC 2019
The Way of The World, Chichester 2012

JADE WILLIAMS
Love’s Labour’s Lost, Wanamaker Playhouse 2018
The Seagull, Chichester 2015 
Platonov, Chichester 2015