Review: Marc Burrows The Magic of Terry Pratchett in London

Marc Burrows has been working on his show The Magic of Terry Pratchett for a couple of years now. He performed it at the Edinburgh fringe and has now, for one night only, brought it down to London.

On Thursday 12th October Marc performed his show to around 500 guests at London's Bloomsbury theatre.

Although Rachel and I had been in contact with Marc throughout the writing process this was the first time we'd seen the show.

It was clear that Marc was nervous, and despite what he may have said in the past, this was the biggest audience he had ever performed to. Despite the nerves he soon settled into the material which he had honed during the Edinburgh fringe season.

Surprisingly the gags came quite fast and were for the whole hitting their marks. Some of the puns were groan worthy and one would expect. But the tempo was upbeat and the show was informative. I don't think there anything in the show that I didn't know so it felt familiar. There was a lot of laughter around me so it was obviously entertaining to those that didn't know Terry quite so well. (We were surrounded by journalists who were probably not quite so au-fait as we were about Terry's life).

So after a slide show presentation with a mix of stories, anecdotes, video clips and photos culminating with the difficult subject of Terry's final few days the first half of the show concluded.

During the intermission Marc set up desk and was selling copies of his The Magic of Terry Pratchett biography and a small companion booklet with some previously unseen articles and interviews of Terry. Due to a printing error the pages were printing in the wrong order making these the KNURD (read backwards) edition.

After the intermission, Helen O'Hara (writer of the foreword of The Magic of Terry Pratchett) interviewed Marc about the book and about Terry and his works. This was a fun and informative half an hour with asides, puns and jokes. After the formal interview questions were thrown open to the audience. For the most part there were actually good questions and Marc did his best to answer them.

And then it was all over. Far too soon.

We really enjoyed an evening of reminiscing about our favourite author. Marc Burrows did a fabulous job and will be doing more shows in 2024. Keep an eye out on our events page for Marc's tour dates or visit Marc's website