The Art of Illusion

Le Cercle des illusionnistes is a 2014 French play that was translated into English and premiered at Hampstead Theatre in 2022. The play is about a man and a woman who meet in a Parisian café and set out to find a vanished theatre, break into a museum, and uncover the mystery of the Mechanical Turk.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 104 pages
Publication date: 22 December 2022
Publisher: Nick Hern Books

It's a matter of perception. The hands of time turn at the same speed for everyone. Yet, a child eagerly awaits the arrival of summer, while an old man witnesses a year pass in the mere blink of an eye.

It's 1984, and as France takes on Yugoslavia in the Euros, a man encounters a woman in a Parisian café. He's returning a bag she lost on the Métro, but he doesn't reveal that he stole it. Instead, he tells her the story of Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, a watchmaker, inventor, and master magician of the nineteenth century. Together, they embark on a quest to find a vanished theatre beneath a bank vault in the Boulevard des Italiens, break into a museum in the Trocadero, uncover the mystery of the Mechanical Turk, witness the birth of the Kinetograph, and delve ever deeper into the Art of Illusion.

Le Cercle des illusionnistes, written by Alexis Michalik, premiered in Paris in 2014 and received several Molière Awards. The Art of Illusion, translated by Waleed Akhtar, opened at Hampstead Theatre in London in December 2022, directed by Tom Jackson Greaves.

Weight: 120g
Dimension: 198 x 129 x 8 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781839041488