Halfway through Chris Cox’s show, you start to wonder when his luck will run out and he’ll start making wildly wrong attempts at mind reading. He’s done a pretty good job up to this point of somehow working out what people are thinking, and then sharing their thoughts with the rest of us. He does claim to be a mind reader who can’t read minds, after all.
Fatal Distraction is an apt name for his show; his routine is less about the magic of mind reading, and more about the techniques used to distract people into showing him what he needs to know. He’s pretty upfront about it too; reminding us several times that he can’t actually read minds. Only, after the umpteenth WTF moment, you begin to wonder whether he actually, somehow, does possess some kind of telepathic power.
The bulk of the show is made up of those moments, all tied together in a sort of love story. You can spend hours trying to work out how he manages to do what he does, to no avail. There are subtle suggestions from him in his patter about how he does it, but mostly the tricks defy explanation.
There’s also plenty of audience participation, but it’s all pretty safe and over quickly with no lasting damage to anyone, and he manages it in a way that makes you forget those fears of being picked on by the comedian. Towards the end of the show people were readily volunteering to help and everyone seemed to feel part of the show, rather than the butt of the joke.
It is mind-blowing, it is amazing, and it’s an entertaining way to spend an hour.
