Mind Games: Mentalist Extraordinaire!

Jeff Newman has chops, that’s for sure. And he probably knows I think that about him. His show will amaze you as he peers into the minds of his subjects with his shockingly blue eyes and reads the very thoughts from them, thoughts he has no conceivable way of knowing other than clairvoyancy.  His show was sprinkled with storytelling and humor which was a mix of cheesy and clever. His charisma is palpable and he truly is a master of his art.

As the show started, the tricks were relatively simple. The usual tell a joke, pick the right card combination you see all of the time with this kind of act. Having been one of the people he brought up onto stage, I can tell you that the people he chose were not plants. I can also tell you that at least one of the things he read from my mind was impossible for him to know. Tricks did progress in difficulty, albeit not quite as rapidly as I would have liked, right down to the final bang. A little more variation in the type of trick, or maybe a partner with a different (artistic) medium, would have gone a long way to making this show exceptional, but hey, how many different things can a mind reader do?

Overall I found Newman to be an entertaining and engaging mentalist who obviously isn’t new to performing. I constantly had the urge to ask him to teach me his ways. I found myself thinking "With a trick like that, man, you could really use that in life!" Alas, I will leave it to him. Mind Games really does leave you wondering though. Just how does he do it?