Billed as a show that delves into the “intricate connection between juggling and magic,” Heka does not fail to deliver. Named after the Egyptian goddess of magic, the show opens with a young woman dressed in some kind of uniform of officialdom, sitting at a gigantic desk like a scene from Kafka. It is not long before strange things begin to happen - her sleeves magically roll themselves up; her hands scurry off to the far reaches of the table and begin inexplicably multiplying; and at some point she appears even to lose a leg.
Karl Germain once commented that “magic is the only honest profession. A magician promises to deceive you and he does” - and deception and trickery are themes that run throughout the show. Is the man claiming to be Sean Gandini really who he says he is? If so, who is the other man claiming to be Sean Gandini? Are there really five actors planted around the audience, as we are told? And what is reality anyway? These existential questions are, of course, dealt with in a lighthearted and entertaining way, fully in keeping with the prescription that magic should always be both amusing and spectacular.
The woman is joined by five others, all similarly attired, and the juggling balls come out, mysteriously appearing and disappearing from unexpected parts of each other’s anatomy - coughed, sneezed and pulled out of mouths, nostrils and earlobes, different from the ones they entered. And soon, of course, the juggling itself begins. The show is highly choreographed, and part of its delight is the pure aesthetic joy of witnessing synchronised juggling by unfeasibly skilled professionals. At points it becomes a captivating dance, the balls and hoops cascading like a firework display above the heads of the participants.
As the show progresses, the compere lets us in on some of the philosophy of magic, as articulated by its most accomplished pioneers over the centuries - not in the form of a dry lecture, of course, but rather selected quotations chanted in time and in unison by all seven performers as the balls and hoops coarse between them - and sometimes translated into Finnish or Mandarin, to reflect the multinational composition of the troupe. Thus we hear from Jean-Eugene Robert Houdin (the most famous magician of the mid-nineteenth century and the inspiration behind the stage name of Harry Houdini): “a magician is merely an actor playing the part of a magician;” from Teller (of contemporary American magic duo Penn and Teller): “magic is the theatrical linking of a cause with an effect that has no basis in physical reality;” and from several of their lineage in between.
Other parts of the show are not so much magic per se but rather mesmerising displays generated by the co-ordinated intersection of multiple human bodies. One beautiful moment comes when pairs of performers share a single pair of trousers (one leg each), allowing all kinds of optical trickery, in particular slow motion running through the air (all, of course, whilst simultaneously keeping a multitude of objects flying). It is a great reminder of the incredible feats made possible by human co-operation; entertaining, enthralling, beautiful and spectacular.