There are some rare gems on the Edinburgh Fringe and the multi-talented, multi-lingual Swedish magician Charlie Caper shines out among them.

Caper, 43, began doing magic at the age of eight and in more than two decades on the road has worked in 53 countries. The 2009 winner of the Sweden’s Got Talent television show, he lives in Stockholm but seems thoroughly at home on stage wherever in the world he happens to be in what to mere mortals is the mystifying world of the magician. 

Looking lithe and lean in a three-piece check suit – made by Joe Hall of the independent Edinburgh menswear store Frontiers Man – with 1930s-style black-and-white Dr Martens brogue spats and a Homberg hat, Caper rifled through a suitcase full of wizardry. 

Audience card choices were found amid a warmly witty repartee, sometimes in an unsuspecting pocket or regurgitated out of his mouth; Caperzini rosso bottles mysteriously disappeared, then reappeared underneath hollow covers, then multiplied seemingly ad infinitum; coke tins appeared out of apparently empty shoes and there was a jokey slow-mo, this-is-how-it’s-done sequence that, of course, left everyone none the wiser. 

And there was a running riff involving his black and white-spotted bow tie that had a habit of disappearing from his neck and turning up in the most unusual of places. Throughout it all, Caper had a packed (albeit somewhat reticent) audience quite literally in the palms of his dexterous hands.

As well as being a magician, he is a robotics engineer – a skill he honed during the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic – and the performance also featured a motorised toy robot which was a joyous mini-me of Caper after he 3D-scanned and 3D-printed his head and hands onto the object.

Charlie Caper

Two metal cases, a smaller brown leather case and a looping line of lampshades were at the back of the stage, while the act was enveloped by hand-picked jazz and swing numbers interspersed with a song by Lou Reed and another by the Norwegian electronic duo Röyksopp. Amid the sleight of hand and the gentle irony, there was a tender feel, exemplified by the Ink Spots’ 1941 song “I don’t want to set the world on fire” in a show that fused nostalgia with a yearning-for-a-better-world quality.

Back to the hat. “This is not a regular hat; it is a magic hat because at the end of the show it has the ability to turn your money into money,” Caper quipped, his performance being part of the PBH Free Fringe.

So, how does he do it? The answer is, I haven’t a clue – along with much of the rapt, 150-strong audience who gave him a standing ovation.

Charlie Caper: Magical

The Liquid Room Warehouse until 28 August

Tickets here

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