Raynar Rogers
Mid heatwave in a room bursting with sweaty people and an even sweatier performer, we meet our charismatic magician Chris Cook and a fitting fake picture of Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. Fitting because the show is titled Fake and it promises to be truthful- a suspicious remark for a trickster, but after turning playing cards into a watch the audience are fully locked in.
Cook is enigmatic, sharp, witty and playful with the audience. He’s ten to fifty steps ahead of us at every moment. It is no small feat to make an audience this warm feel content and comfortable. Cook’s magic extends beyond his speedy hands, it is in his ability to sell us the moments from his powerful onstage presence to the dramatic tension in the show’s writing by Cook and writer director Rhys Williamson. There is magic too in the (fake?) sincerity of our moments together.
The show teaches the audience about an art forger Han Van Meegeren, a Dutch painter whose fakery was so masterful that his works hung in galleries authenticated as genuine works of Vermeer. We learn about Chung Ling Su whose death by bullet catch exposed his far duller identity. We learn about Cook’s own magic tricks, a deconstruction of his art, a truth amongst the illusion, magic that ends the moment its audience wait in wonder.
The show could not be more relevant. How art is perceived in an era when AI’s digital fingers manifest seemingly accomplished work from thin air matters greatly to the pulsing heartbeat of the show. As the world begins to accept the dying fate of the creator, the show ponders over a surprisingly hopeful world of deception and shenanigans dating back to a time when man turned water into wine. Where art and meaning are entwined, a history of fakery follows. Cook has an enigmatic story to tell, one that places in its ring the myth of honesty and the power of entertainment.
There is an art to the kind of manipulation we see in Fake. As we follow a mountainous interactive essay on the history of fakery, we go on a journey that puts the magic tricks behind the important questions. What is art? What criteria determines authenticity? Is the value of work on display based entirely on the quality of its art? As we lean further into the story, our show reaches its macro climax and the conclusion to our art history paper. We turn our attention inward to see ourselves with gaping mouths and wide eyes hooked on as fish begging to be tricked, caught on a rod that we knew was waiting for us.
Clever, naughty and inviting, Fake is a masterclass in storytelling and an incredibly polished one man act that even Jesus the original street magician would have been proud of.
Recommended Drink: Ask the mixologist for their own secret creation. You won’t know if it’s an original, but you’ll feel special!
Performances of Fake have now concluded at Prague Fringe 2026.
Shay Mace
Salvador Kent
