Unlike a certain other wizard, Paul Kieve’s study of sorcery didn’t begin at Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross. And forget about it being written in the stars because, according to the man who is now one of Britain’s top illusionists and official magic consultant for the Guinness Book of Records, his entry into the arcane arts was hardly the result of some divine destiny.

“I was lucky because my hobby was something I could go out there and do,” explains Paul, who has been obsessed with magic since receiving a toy tricks set as a kid. “Magic
is a performing art at the end of the day but I never consciously thought ‘I could do this as a career’. I just had a few lucky breaks and followed my nose.

“When I started there was more of a variety circuit than there is now, so you’d get work doing end-of-the-pier stuff with Sue Pollard or someone,” he goes on. “I just took on jobs that interested me, which took me on a career path I could never have planned. I’ve ended up in a place where there’s really no-one else doing what I do. So if people need something quirky or odd doing, I tend to get the call.”

GETTING PHYSICAL

It may not sound as mystical as Hogwarts, but Paul could teach Harry Potter a thing or two. In fact he has: One of his most high-profile jobs has been arranging physical
magic sequences for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, teaching Daniel Radcliffe how to perform his tricks as well as supervising special effects for the Marauders Map sequence.

“I was contacted by the Harry Potter production office because [director] Alfonso Cuaron wanted to increase the amount of background magic in the film without having to rely solely on CGI,” reveals Paul. “CGI sequences are very expensive and the other advantage of doing things physically is that you can see them through the camera. Actors interact with something that’s happening in real time and space, which is very attractive to a director.”

“The first meetings I had were quite nerve-wracking,” he admits. “I was the first illusionist to work on any of the films, so I felt that I was representing not just myself but my profession as a whole. They asked me to demonstrate about fifty things and show them some of my previous work on video before they gave me the job.”

TRICKS OF THE TRADE

Young Potter isn’t the only wizard to have benefited from Paul’s wisdom; he was also responsible for designing an on-line wizardry course to promote the Sci-Fi Channel’s recent mini-series adaptation of Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea novels. But the magic spreads beyond the silver screen:

As well as being a performer in his own right, Paul is also highly indemand as a consultant and special effects designer for the stage.

His bulging portfolio includes a number of illusions and effects for musicals and plays such as The Witches of Eastwick, the English National Ballet’s version of Alice in Wonderland and the stage adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches, which recently completed its run at the Birmingham REP.

But whilst Paul is called upon to add a sense of the supernatural, he is utterly down-to-earth about the processes involved.

“My role is a collaborative one with the director, writer and set designer,” he reveals. “Unlike performing a magic show where you can just wheel on any prop you like and put a glammy girl inside without having to justify it, for a stage show the illusion has to fit into the context of the story which is more of a challenge.”

“There is a technical aspect to it, but I don’t like explaining how things actually work. People know that actors are just wearing costumes and speaking other people’s words, but they still believe that there’s an art behind it. But for some reason when you tell people how an illusion is performed they just go, ‘Oh; so it’s just a bit of wire,’ which demeans it in some way,” Paul laments.

MASTER OF PUPPETS

One of the most spectacular scenes in The Witches comes when the lead character is transformed into a mouse: The actor must appear to shrink, and be replaced by a model mouse. On this particular production Paul collaborated with local puppet maker Craig Denston, who began his career at Birmingham’s Cannon Hill Puppet Theatre and has
subsequently crafted puppets and masks for numerous stage shows at The REP and elsewhere.

Craig believes that while the hand of a craftsman is essential for his creations to function properly, it takes the eye of an artist really to bring them to life.

“First and foremost you need to remember that you’re designing a character,” he asserts “I was trained as an illustrator;  just as I’d labour for hours getting an eyebrow right in a drawing, I’ll do exactly the same for a puppet to give it personality.”

“Puppeteering is about performance, but the skill of making them is much more like sculpting. They’re quite separate disciplines,” Craig insists. “But whilst puppets can do all sorts of things that actors can’t, when you’re working on a stage show you have to be aware of the dimensions of the set and how the puppets will have to interact with the actors. You can’t always show off really clever tricks,” he admits. “There’s just as much onus on the actors to work well with the puppets and treat them as another member of the cast.”

UNDER NO ILLUSIONS

Although today’s audiences are used to having their eyeballs fried by spectacular special effects at the cinema, Craig believes that live illusions and puppeteering add an extra element to a shows that computers simply can’t simulate. “I don’t feel like I have to compete with CGI at all,” he shrugs. “Unless they come up with a way of projecting a three-dimensional character into space my job should be pretty safe.”

“Films are actually a great source of inspiration for me because I find a lot of traditional puppet theatre very unadventurous,” admits Craig. “Films like Finding Nemo and A Bug’s Life are great because they’re very design-led and the characters are so colourful, which is exactly what I try to do with my theatre work. But on stage I think they actually appear more real.”

MORE TRICKS UP THE SLEEVE

Paul concurs, but acknowledges that the success of the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings franchises – and the popularity of TV performers like Derren Brown – have made people aware that there’s more to the magician’s art than pulling rabbits out of hats.

“The Paul Daniels era is long gone, thankfully; when he was the only magician on TV people began to think that that was all that magic was,” says Paul. “These movies have put an idea of magic and mysticism in the air, so there are plenty of opportunities for people who can perform magic well.”

“Even David Blaine’s act where he went without food for weeks was important. It might have been a little misjudged for this country, and when I went down there loads of people were just taking the Mickey. But everyone was having a good time whether they were laughing at him or not, and he transported people away from their everyday lives for a few minutes whilst they watched him – which is what a magician’s supposed to do, after all.”

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Illusionist Paul Kieve created many of the magic effects in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and was personal magic tutor to Daniel Radcliffe. Now working on the lavish stage production of Roald Dahl’s The Witches, he spoke to Laura Kendall.

Bills, traffic jams, late-running trains: these are the biggest problems most of us face each day. Spare a thought, then, for Paul Kieve, whose daily challenges include shrinking children, drowning theatre critics in buckets and persuading maps to fold themselves.

One of Britain’s most sought-after illusionists, Kieve’s day job involves making film, theatre and television audiences believe the unbelievable.

From working as a performing magician, his career has evolved into consulting and creating illusions for more than 100 international productions including West End musicals, opera, ballet and blockbuster movies.

And it all started when he was given a magic set as a birthday present. “I’d always had an interest,” says Kieve. “My older brother was quite interested in magic and I can remember him playing around with quite simple tricks at home. But I did get a magic set for my 10th birthday, which sort of triggered it.”

His big break came at just 16, when pop star Sade chose Kieve to appear in the video for her song Your Love Is King. That experience, he says, fired his determination to become a professional magician. “I think that was the turning point,” he says. “I remember having such an amazing time with it and so much fun with Sade and the band.

“I had a series of lucky breaks when I was at school and was given the opportunity to really enjoy it and it seemed daft for me to even consider anything else.

“I don’t think, at the time, it was based on a sensible decision but it seemed very exciting to me. My parents were very supportive, though my father was very keen I should stay on and do my A levels, so I did that.”

In 1986 he formed a double act, The Zodiac Brothers, which performed around the world for five years – but a new challenge soon presented itself. “My local theatre was the Theatre Royal Stratford East and, in 1991, they’d just started a production of H.G Wells’ The Invisible Man,” he says.

Kieve created more than 50 special effects – a world record – for the production, including the astonishing moment the title character removed his bandages to reveal absolutely nothing – his head and face were “invisible”.

“I didn’t really imagine anything would come of it but there was a huge fuss about it and it moved into the West End,” he says. “I’d worked very hard on it and had amazing reviews. I didn’t even think it would go beyond Stratford but, even now, I get work from that show.

“The business is quite small, in a way, if you’re specialised, and I think I became known as the guy to get in to do funny moments on stage.”

He is now busily creating rather more gruesome illusions for the play Theatre of Blood, which stars Jim Broadbent as as an actor who kills critics in the style of Shakespearean plays. “I’m spending all my time electrocuting people and drowning them in buckets,” he says.

He is also working on the hotly anticipated Lord of the Rings stage musical, which has its world premiere in Toronto next February. The production has a budget of £11.7 million.

Kieve’s magical prowess can currently be seen in Birmingham Rep’s production of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s story, The Witches, at the New Wimbledon Theatre from Wednesday.

He worked on the original production – the tale of a young boy who is turned into a mouse after stumbling across a witch’s convention – in 1992 and was “delighted” to have the chance to refine the illusions he created. “It’s lovely to be able to return to it,” he says. “The Witches is still one of the trickiest shows I can remember working on because the particular challenges are very specific. The idea of children shrinking and turning into mice on stage was not easy.”

Nor was creating a myriad of magical moments in the last Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Kieve is the only illusionist to have worked on any of the films. “They had a new director, Alfonso Cuaron, for the third film and he was keen to explore the idea of using real live magic in addition to the effects,” he says. “He wanted to create an extra layer of magic so they wouldn’t have to rely on computer-generated images alone. His idea was there should be lots of stuff going on in the background.”

Kieve was summoned before “everybody involved with the film” to demonstrate his bag of tricks.

“It was pretty terrifying,” he says. “It was in a funny, cold marquee and I felt I wasn’t just representing what I could do but the possibilities of illusion in general because no one else had ever been given that opportunity.”

Among the illusions he devised for the movie was the Marauders’ Map, which cleverly folds and unfolds itself according to who wishes to use it.

He also filled a classroom with levitating orbs – after practising the illusion with a £1 Christmas bauble bought from his local corner shop in Hackney. “It gives me an enormous joy to see my illusions sit alongside the CGI stuff,” he says. “I constructed that map and operated it and invented it, so to see it gives me a real sense of satisfaction.

“It’s unbelievable when I think about how many people have seen these things.”

However, millions of cinema-goers weren’t the only ones to be dazzled by Kieve’s skills – the star of the Harry Potter films, Daniel Radcliffe, was so impressed he became Kieve’s pupil. “Like me, he’d been given a magic set and was curious about it. It was joyful teaching him, not because of who he plays in the film but because he’s a really fun, bright, intelligent kid,” he says of Radcliffe.

“He worked really hard at it and became really good, I have to say. He definitely had an aptitude for it. I learned a lot by teaching him. He was very insightful and asked some really good questions.”

Radcliffe was apparently also quick to pick up on magic’s mischievous side. “He spent a lot of time on that film going round showing people tricks,” Kieve says. “He told me the first time he ever met Emma Thompson he showed her a card trick I’d taught him and she screamed.”

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