Ask Nicolai Friedrich if he can read your mind, and he’ll wag his finger and say, “Now stop thinking those nasty thoughts.” The German mentalist, who was in the city recently, spent his morning charming the media with his easy wit and seamless humour, while in the evening, he did the same for his awestruck audience at Sir Mutha Venkatasubba Rao Concert Hall. On the following day, he had two more shows — Mumbai in the morning and Pune at night.
Doesn’t he get to see any of these cities then? “Unfortunately, no. I only get to look out windows.” The mentalist, who has performed in stages around the world, including London, Lisbon, Las Vegas, the old opera house in Frankfurt and at the ballroom of the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, says that travelling is the most stressful part of the job. And how often does he travel? “Ask my wife and she’ll say every day,” he laughs.
Nicolai has always been interested in magic, but he never thought he’ll do it professionally. When he was four years old, he watched a magician in a circus, who left him in awe. The same year, he received a magic set for Christmas, and made spectators out of all the children from the neighbourhood. Slowly, from there, he graduated to performing for a paid audience. “I thought it was a nice hobby, but you have expectations from your job. At that point, I was doing shows, but things weren’t great.” So, he decided, he needed a university education. He considered Economics and Medicine, but ultimately chose Law. Magic, however, was still a part of his life.
After eight years of law school, he practised it professionally for a while, but “never full-time, because I was doing my shows”. Suddenly, he realised he had enough shows to fill his calendar, and made enough money to pursue this professionally. “When you start, you always want to do the big illusions; you want to make elephants appear or saw ladies in half. But then I realised what’s most important: wowing the audience.” That’s when he turned to mentalism. “That fascinates people very much, and I also liked the psychological side of it.”
He’s a self-made mentalist. As, he says, are most others in the field. “There’s no school where you learn this. You read, practise different disciplines like contact mind-reading and hypnosis, and perfect an act through trial-and-error.”
Magic, he says, like any other contemporary art, has changed with time. The stage is no longer decked with big boxes, nor are there glamorous female assistants to distract the audience. The performances now, like Nicolai’s, are infused with humour, storytelling and structure. The background music, too, is lighter, with obvious comic elements. “Comedy is very important to get a dramatic structure and get people’s attention. You need to have moments where they concentrate and ones where they are relaxed as well.” The biggest challenge, always, he says, is winning the audience.
In the last 10 years, it’s not only different crowds he’s won, but also awards, including one at the World Mentalist Championship, 2009, Beijing. He has also performed some fantastic feats — he’s made lay objects levitate, predicted newspaper headlines a week before they appeared and flown a plane blind-folded. Wait, what? “That was a big risk, oh yes,” he laughs, “I regretted it the minute I did it. I kept thinking, ‘oh god what am I doing here?’ I was lucky I landed safely.” Candid, isn’t he? His life beyond the stage, he reiterates, is just like anyone else’s. He’s just a regular Joe, with a few tricks up his sleeve, some of which are meant to leave an audience in awe for hours.
So, now, the most important question: has he slipped up on stage? “Ya, of course,” he nods matter-of-factly. And how often does that happen? “Always,” he laughs. “Normally, if something does not go as planned, in 90 per cent of the cases, the audience will not realise, because I switch from plan A to plan B before they notice. And if that does not work as well, there’s also a plan C.”
At the fundraiser show organised by Madras Mylapore Round Table 3 and Madras Mylapore Ladies Circle 4, Nicolai Friedrich performed to an audience of awestruck adults and enthusiastic children. He read minds, guessed numbers, played with ropes and did card tricks — sounds like something you’d expect from any magic show, doesn’t it? But there were a few acts which got everyone to sit up and take notice. A bowling ball fell out of a book, a torn newspaper magically became whole again and a seemingly random member from the audience found her description precisely put down to a tee in a locked box on stage. The show, although slow-paced, was a hit because of the enthusiasm and showmanship of the performer.
