Keith’s got new tricks up his sleeve

IT’S not an easy time for touring artists but Keith Barry is still able to bring out the crowds.

The Waterford magician is bringing his show 8 Deadly Sins all over the country, with almost all of the venues, including Glór where he will be on February 17, selling out.
He first made his name with the TV show Close Encounters with Keith Barry, which ran from 2003-2005. It included appearances from a number of celebrities and would eventually air in 28 countries across the world. The success of this programme went a long way to making Barry’s name in Ireland, showing his own charisma and the amazement of members of the public and household names at the tricks he performed.
In 2004 he performed an MTV special called Brainwashed and the following year he had a live Christmas special entitled Keith Barry Live with Friends. He has had various other appearances on international TV over the last seven years, including an appearance on drama CSI:Miami.
Barry has a mixed record as a sporting tipster. A public prediction that Leinster would win a Heineken Cup final by exactly three points is thought to have cost Paddy Powers in the region of €225,000, with some people backing it at 19 to 1. However predictions that Waterford would topple Kilkenny and Mayo beat Kerry in All-Ireland finals, were proven wrong.
His last show, The Asylum, finished its run in May of this year. On the tour he set the record as the most successful solo act ever to play in the Olympia Theatre. In mid-July his new live show was at the same theatre where it received a standing ovation and ran for five weeks.
In a recent interview he said that while there is audience participation in 8 Deadly Sins, people won’t be coerced. “If you want to come along but really don’t want to come on stage, then I’m not going to force someone to do so. With all my shows, I think people are healthily nervous of coming up on stage.
”People are nervous because they don’t fully understand what I do or how I do it. They don’t fully understand how I can read body language or hypnotise people or how I do what I do.
“I think this will be the most visual show I’ve put together. Mentalism can sometimes be visually boring – there’s not a lot to look at – but with this show there definitely is. It’s a visual feast.”