Once again we mark the passing of another two to three years with a Derren Brown show. Once a familiar staple in the family routine (and indeed still so - I’m seeing this show again with them later in the year), this time I’m going to see it in Bristol with Alasdair, which is a treat. More so than any other thing I write about here, I don’t know how best to write about this without spoiling anything, so here we go. I don’t think it quite lives up to Showman as a conceptual whole, but that is a very high bar. There is, though, a central set piece - that is somehow not the finale! - that impresses both on a technical level (how are those two objects that identical?!) but in ambition also. For the lucky participant, the show is briefly all about them, and I think leaves them with something really special. It’s an interesting intersect of his later TV shows, more focused on self-improvement (although can it be called that when he’s improving someone else’s self?), and his live work. Meanwhile! In a routine around dousing, Alasdair gets swept along with the crowd and by the end of the first half he has moved from our seat in the circle to being in the aisle in the stalls. He is disconcerted; I am delighted.