Letter On The Last Night
In 2015, I embarked on my first ever residency in The Grand Central Hotel in Glasgow, every Saturday night in a private suite on the 1st floor. It was titled Little Mysteries and sold out its entire run of weekly performances every Saturday night for 16 months.
When I created the show, I had no idea how much momentum it would gather as the dates sold out and the audience reviews said very nice things about it.
At the time, it was the biggest project I’d committed to; we launched the show with tickets on sale for 12 months in advance and I was nervous about committing to so many shows in case I didn’t sell enough tickets and had to cancel them.
By June sales had slowed down. By August we had sold out every ticket until the end of December. We launched an extra 4 months of shows which sold out in 4 minutes.
I was overwhelmed by the support I’d received from people, both friends and strangers. The show was a success. There was an option to extend again and add more shows but by the end of the 16 months, I was eager for a change and a new challenge.
When you perform the same show over and over again (it worked out 78 shows in total including private and corporate bookings for the show) you start to go into autopilot. You find every action is ingrained into your subconscious; every movement of a card, every nuanced sleight, the use of language and misdirection. Even the impromptu jokes and audience interaction started to get very similar every night. It’s important to have parts of the show that bring uncertainty and risk to keep you in the moment.
When we announced the show was ending there was an influx of people who had yet to see the show messaging me looking for tickets knowing they might not get the chance to see it.
I’d committed to it ending and had already started working on the next project so I never had any intentions to add more dates.
The last few months of the show were brilliant. Probably the most enjoyable shows I’ve performed. They were tight, had such a natural flow and it has been tweaked and rewritten several times to get it to the standard that I was extremely happy with, which is still to this day, very unusual.
The penultimate show was perfect, almost too perfect. I remember vividly having serious doubts after it about closing the show the following week and thought about extending again because it felt great knowing that it was in a good place.
I opted against it and the following week, I would close the show and perform Little Mysteries for the final time.
I was excited, nervous, anxious, happy, sad. It was a real mixture of emotions. The excitement seemed to override all the other emotions as I got in early and got the room set up and warmed up to get ready for the show.
I’d seen the list of audience members who were due to arrive, many of whom I didn’t know. This can be a good thing as they come in with little expectation.
The lights came up at the start of the show and right away I realised something was wrong. An important prop for the show wasn’t where it should be which immediately panicked me. I was so focused on the occasion I hadn’t prepared properly.
I managed to secretly acquire the prop and get on with the show. From there on in, the show was flat, I missed important lines and some of the subtle nuances that had improved the show over 16 months. Unbeknown to the audience, I messed up one of the most important parts of the show and although I recovered I knew I was having a disastrous night.
I managed to get through 80 sweaty minutes of disappointment and although I was able to bring the show to its finale and gain a standing ovation from those in attendance, I knew it was sub-par and felt like I’d let everyone down. It wasn’t the closing night I had imagined.
The audience feedback after the show was amazing. People thoroughly enjoyed the show and there was a few people who said they felt privileged to be there at the last ever performance. This made it worse. The fact it was the last one and it wasn’t the rousing climax of the entire run that I was hoping for.
I cleared the room of all the show equipment and props and turned the lights off in the Mandela Suite for what I thought would be the last time and had this real sickening feeling in my stomach. It was a feeling of real disappointment and I was really annoyed at myself for how the show has went.
I don’t talk much after shows as I’m always thinking about every stupid little detail of the show and little improvements, even on the last night I took notes in my notebook of how I could improve it. I can be quiet and moody after shows. Anyone that has stayed back for a drink with me after shows with testify to that.
As I walked down the grand staircase of the hotel into the foyer, the concierge shouted me over. “There’s a letter here for you.” he said.
I’d never received any mail at the hotel in the 16 months I’d been there. I said “Are you sure it’s for me?”
The letter was indeed addressed to me. I took the letter and sat in the large single reading chair that was in front of the mirror at the station side of the foyer. It had a beautiful wax seal stamped with the letter R.
I had no idea who it was from and didn’t recognise the handwriting.
I opened the envelope carefully to preserve as much of the wax seal as I could. I sat in silence and read the letter.
And then I read it again.
An audience member from the previous show had taken the time to write to me to tell me how much they enjoyed the show. It had taken over a year to get a ticket but said it was “worth the wait.”
They were very complimentary of the show and confessed a real interest in magic. I won’t go into detail about the entire content of the letter. I will say that it kindly mentioned their over all experience of the show. They were able to perfectly capture in words exactly what I was trying to achieve with the show; the story, the intimacy, the experience etc.
One line in particular really stuck with me.
“The interaction with a group of strangers who were no longer strangers at the end of the show.”
You very seldom get genuine and honest feedback like this. The letter was a beautiful gesture. The timing couldn’t not have been better either. If I needed anything to land on my lap that night it was this letter. It let me know that I’d achieved what I’d set out to do at the very start and that all the hard work had been worth it.
I realised two things:
Not every show can be brilliant. You have nights that aren’t on point but an audience will seldom notice as it’s their first time seeing it. Just go with the flow and be in the moment and people will go with you.
Writing letters is a dying art but something we should all do more often.
I still have this letter. I read it now and again. I suffer from Imposter Syndrome a lot of the time, worrying if what I do is ever good enough and if I’ll ever reach the standard I aspire to. Sometimes you need something to provide the context required to remind you what is important and the reason why performers put themselves on stage in the first place, the audience.
I’ve kept the writer anonymous in case they don’t want to declare themselves. I don’t think I ever took the chance to write back and I deeply regret that now.
If you’re the person that wrote the letter and you’re reading this now, thank you. You’ll never know how much that letter meant to me and still does.
R x