Shock value high at sinful Barry’s Glór show

THOSE of a delicate disposition might be best to avoid Keith Barry’s Eight Deadly Sins, which will be at Glór on September 27.
The Waterford man made his name with a magic show but his repertoire has evolved fairly dramatically and the show will be quite outrageous, he says. “To sum it up in a few words, mentalism, hypnotism, mind-reading, profanity and nudity. If you’re easily offended, don’t come to the show, I’ll say that much. Each of the demonstrations comes under the umbrella of the existing seven deadly sins and there is an eighth deadly sin for the purposes of the show. Over the course of the night, 50 people are selected, completely at random from the audience and landed on stage. Two people from the audience will be going to confession and I’ll have to hack into their brains and figure out what sins they’re thinking of, while they’re in the confession box I have on stage.
“You can imagine the sin of lust, when I get someone on stage I get them to think of somebody that they’d love to have sexual relations with and what position they’d like to be in. I’ve got to hack into their brain and figure that out. All the while, I have my sidekick, a crazed monk, coming on stage assisting me throughout the show.”
Revealing people’s sexual desires and fantasies has the potential to create some rather serious relationship problems but Barry promises to be gentle. “It all is in good fun. If I find something out that people really don’t want revealed, I won’t reveal it. I’m not going to reveal that they’ve been cheating on their spouse or anything like that. You can rest assured that you won’t be arrested or divorced at the end of it.”
He can give quite specific information but says he doesn’t leave people in trouble. “I tell people the exact position that they’re thinking of and the exact person they’re thinking of. Not only that but where they’re thinking of it too. But I always get them to think of a celebrity. I’m not going to reveal that they want to sleep with their co-worker and get them into trouble. I’m always very conscientious and it’s all in good fun and jest and I’m not going to embarrass people on stage.”
He says he likes to convert the mind-hacking atheists in his audiences and has put a lot of work into learning how to track people’s thoughts. “What I do is based on science, body language and deduction. By reading people’s micro expressions and a number of other things put together, I can hack into their minds and figure out their thoughts. I guess really it’s thought-reading rather than mind reading. I don’t believe anyone can really read someone else’s mind but if I get someone to think a specific thought at a specific moment in time and then am able to look at them and deduce what they’re thinking based on their reactions to what I say. I’ve studied a huge amount of psychology, hypnosis, neuro-linguistic programming, all of these things, over the years.”
He burst on the scene with the TV show Close Encounters with Keith Barry, which has been broadcast in 28 countries now, after initially wowing RTÉ audiences.
While much of his magic left audiences awed, he wanted to do more with his career. “I’m more interested in the subconscious mind and the power of the mind than I am in magic now. Really, I don’t do any magic as such anymore. It’s more about the power of the subconscious mind, about hacking into the mind, what’s possible with the mind, how to reprogramme it, how to figure out what people are thinking and so on and so forth.”
For shows like Eight Deadly Sins, and the Asylum, which preceded it, a lot of research is required. “I always come up with the name of the show first. When I came up with Eight Deadly Sins, I researched where the existing seven deadly sins come from and researched everything about those. A lot of people think those sins were in the Bible, that’s not true.They were written by a monk in 375AD when he catalogued the dangerous thoughts that he found in his soul. I do a massive amount of research on whatever topic I’m doing and I create things to suit that. For the sin of gluttony, I get people to come on stage and drink copious amounts of alcohol and be gluttonous on stage. Then while I’m blindfolded, I have to figure out what they’re drinking at that moment in time and they’ve got a load of different drinks to choose from.”
He says he likes to give audiences a rather madcap evening that is thrilling and amusing. “I could very easily plod along and do the same old, same old stuff for years but I like pushing the envelope, I like pushing the audience over the edge of a cliff, scaring the bejesus out of them, having them laugh their heads off at the same time and at the end everyone leaves the theatre the better for the experience and after having a great night out,” he concludes.