Kevin Quantum: Unbelievable Magic for Non-Believers
★★★☆☆ High voltage
Assembly Room (Venue 20) Fri 1 – Sat 24 Aug 2025
Review by Sophie Good
Edinburgh-based physicist-turned-magician Kevin Quantum brings a new bag of tricks to amaze audiences at the Assembly Rooms this Fringe with his Unbelievable Magic for Non-Believers.
Kevin Quantum in Unbelievable Magic for Non-Believers. Pic Alex Orr.
Quantum poses an interesting question to his audience as they arrive; everyone is invited to pick a ‘believer’ or ‘non-believer’ card. He freely admits he’d love for a full house of believers but is equally keen to convert the sceptics. And for the rest of the show, he throws himself into convincing you that there is magic to believe in.
He opens with a fun ‘six things before breakfast’ – producing a variety of breakfast-themed food and drink in surprising and inventive ways, resulting in a full meal and a fair few gimmicks and tricks to keep the audience entertained. It’s a light-hearted way to start things off, although the sight lines of the Ballroom occasionally mean it is hard to see the detail if you are sat further back.
Quantum is a charismatic entertainer who builds up an easy audience rapport, and engages with a suitably varied programme within the hour long performance.
variety pack
He continues at pace with an audience participatory variety pack, including close hand card tricks (shown on a big screen for those at the back), gimmicks, gags, audio illusions, stories and mind-reading. There is an impressively complicated use of the flyer you’re handed when you walk in where, with the help of many folds and tears, the result is audible gasps of amazement and a few sniggers from those who got it wrong.
Trailed throughout the show is Quantum’s Big Showpiece: a high-voltage finale featuring a million-volt Tesla coil. He adds the excitement of risk and danger, always a crowd pleaser, using a health and safety supervisor to help operate the machine. The machine, or so he claims, might just unlock some mind reading powers. And it’s up to the audience to verify that.
Kevin Quantum in Unbelievable Magic for Non-Believers. Pic Alex Orr.
It is all impressive stuff, whether you can work out the logical explanation for how he achieves things or not, and it’s got a kind of Derren Brown style energy to it. It’s the mix of logic and science combined with the unexplainable that sets Quantum’s show apart.
There is a lot going on, however, so some of the threads are lost along the way, especially if he plants something earlier in the show, and a lot has happened since.
As well as the risky electrical voltages, Quantum weaves in a fair bit of storytelling and builds up to an autobiographical nugget which is extraordinary in itself and defies any logical explanation, sometimes life is just magical.
Whether you’re believer or not, it’s worth finding out what Quantum has to offer.
Running time: One hour (no interval).
Assembly Rooms (Ballroom), 54 George Street EH2 2LR (Venue 20).
Fri 1 – Sun 24 August 2025.
Daily (Not Tue 19): 7.40pm.
Tickets and details: Book here on EdFringe.com.
Book here on EdFest.com.*
Show website: Show website: unbelievablemagic.live
Facebook: @KevinQuantum
Instagram: @kevinquantum
YouTube: @kevinquantum
*affiliate link.
ENDS
