THE SIGNALMAN
Wilton’s Music Hall
★★★
“Alnwick is a charming entertainer, with a gift for spontaneous humour and sleight of hand”
A lesser-known fact about Charles Dickens is that he was a talented magician and conjuror, performing at private parties and even giving public shows. Inspired by famous illusionists of his day, he adopted eccentric stage personas to perform his elaborate stunts (the modern illusionist, David Copperfield, famously took his stage name from Dickens’ classic novel). In his mid-thirties, Dickens stopped performing magic. Most of his time was now spent writing.
David Alnwick, writer, actor and magician, combines these two disciplines for his stage show, “The Signalman”. The passion for magic and illusions that inspires his performance is matched by his penchant for a good yarn – particularly a ghost story. “I like to believe in ghosts”, he tells us by way of introduction, imbuing a sense of the supernatural into his stagecraft. There is no high-tech wizardry here. Just soft and sepulchral lighting, and engaging repartee; occasionally spooky, but mainly casual and off the cuff. In the perfect surroundings of the crumbling Wilton’s Music Hall, there is more than a whiff of Victoriana. We could very well be back in the early nineteenth century. Except that the audience shatters the illusion. Alnwick himself is suitably attired, but he jokingly bemoans the fact that there is not a top hat in sight among the crowd. No pulling rabbits (or plum puddings) out of the hat this evening!
What Alnwick is thrillingly skilled at is the art of psychic phenomena – otherwise known as mind-reading tricks. His approach is humble, almost self-deprecating. He often leads us into thinking that it is going wrong. But then – of course – he turns the tables leaving us somewhat awestruck. Audience participation is key, and his manner is affable (a touch impatient at times) and engaging, and we are all willing accomplices to his trickery.
He reminds us that, back in Dickens’ day, magic – for many – was something to be afraid of. It was an age of ritual and superstition, and new ideas of belief. The ghost story was a popular literary genre. So, for the second part of the show, Alnwick treats us to a reading of Dickens’ short story, ‘The Signal-Man’. Inspired partly by a major rail crash that affected Dickens personally, it tells the story of a railway signalman who is visited by an apparition that haunts him; each spectral appearance preceding a tragic event in the railway tunnel by his signal-box. Like ‘A Christmas Carol’, the rule of three is applied, but in this case the third encounter leads to personal tragedy rather than redemption.
It is an interesting tale, but it doesn’t get the flesh creeping, and the atmosphere is too warm for the requisite chill to satisfy us. Alnwick relies on the book, thereby restricting his movements resulting in a rather static delivery. But what is mystifyingly missing, and what we were hoping for, is the true integration of magic and storytelling. This is a show of two distinct halves. We have the magic act. And then we have the story. Nothing connects them.
Alnwick is a charming entertainer, with a gift for spontaneous humour and sleight of hand. There is a gentleness to the delivery that conjures the mood of an old-fashioned parlour game. But as an aficionado of magic and Gothic narrative, Alnwick has missed a trick by not mixing the two together in a more cohesive way. Yet he is unquestionably a charismatic personality and raconteur. That is no illusion.
THE SIGNALMAN
Wilton’s Music Hall
Reviewed on 29th June 2026
by Jonathan Evans
