‘I started doing magic in the school playground,” says Dynamo, the British magician. “And now I’m doing my first arena tour . . . It’s crazy.”
Dynamo (real name Steven Frayne), who comes to Dublin for five shows next month, began doing magic because he was being bullied in school in Bradford. His grandfather performed magic as a hobby and taught young Steven how to “take away their strength”, so they couldn’t pick him up anymore.
“It wasn’t to perform for entertainment purposes,” he says. “It was as a defence mechanism against the bullies. It really helped me at school because before that I was getting a real hard time.”
At college, Steven began using magic to entertain. After a life-threatening operation to fix an abscess on his bowel, a result of his Crohn’s disease, he decided to drop out and pursue magic full time. “Because I nearly died in hospital, it made me think, when I get out of here, I want to do what I want to do. Magic is what I love, so I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing it.”
Dynamo cuts a very slight frame. Casually dressed and younger looking than his age (33), he seems very ordinary. When we meet, beyond introducing himself as Dynamo, there is nothing to betray the fact he can do extraordinary things.
He walked on water across the Thames river in London, walked down the side of the LA Times building in Los Angeles and levitated above the Shard in London. The last was for the final episode of the fourth and final series of his television show, Magician Impossible.
“When I was levitating above the Shard, that was the scariest thing I’ve ever done and if that had gone wrong, I would have died,” he says. “I ain’t coming back from that. There’s genuine risk there, but I’m confident in my skills.”
Dynamo was accused in some quarters of faking the Shard stunt, using wires to suspend himself. There will always be doubters, he says, but his arena tour will prove them wrong.
“You’re always going to get scepticism and people with their own theories,” he acknowledges. “That’s the great thing about this live tour. All those theories get blown out the window. You can say what you want about anything you might see me do on TV, but you have the opportunity to come and see it live, in front of your face, no TVs, just me and you and an audience, who are there to experience it for themselves. I guarantee you – seeing is believing.”
The arena tour was initially five nights in Manchester and five in London, but has since been extended to 110 shows. What’s the appeal? Magic, he says, takes people back to a childlike state of mind where anything is possible.
“With magic, no matter how old you are, your mind goes back to that mind of a child, because they don’t know how something works. They’re like, well if that’s possible, maybe anything is possible. The older we get, the younger we want to feel again. We want to go back and relive those childhood dreams, and magic allows you to do that, even if it’s just for a moment.”
To recreate the intimacy of performing magic on a TV show in these giant arenas, some of which hold up to 5,000, Dynamo will transport 11 40-foot trucks containing the stage and a giant Imax screen to show close-up bits of magic when he ventures into the audience. “It’s just 11 trucks for my massive ego,” he jokes.
Dynamo hears that Ireland gets “pretty mad” around St Patrick’s Day, but that hasn’t stopped him scheduling a show for that day. “Because there’s so much reliance on audience participation, every single night is different,” he says. “They dictate the way the show goes. I have no clue how a show is going to go on St Patrick’s Day. That show could be a complete different ballgame from any other show that I’ve done, but it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
Dynamo has done magic for Prince Charles, and vice versa. Since becoming a member of the Inner Magic Circle a few years ago, some of the other members – magicians who he considers legends – have asked how his tricks work. “It’s really great when you do something that blows one of your idol’s minds. That’s a cool thing.”
The one person he’d really like to do magic for is Conor McGregor.
“I watched his last fight, all 13 seconds of it. So if he comes to a show, I promise I’ll do a show that’s longer than 13 seconds so he really gets his money’s worth.”
Dynamo plays Dublin’s 3 Arena on March 16th-20th
