Venue 5, King Edward Elementary School,
8530 101 St.

Fri. Aug. 18 – 2:15 p.m.
Sat. Aug. 19 – 9 p.m.
Tues. Aug. 22 – 4 p.m.
Wed. Aug. 23 – 12:15 p.m.
Thurs. Aug. 24 – 7:15 p.m.
Fri. Aug. 25 – 11:15 p.m.
Sun. Aug. 27 – 4 p.m.

Duration: 60 minutes

3.5 of 5 stars

A pleasant hour is to be spent at the Fringe, enjoying Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer – or at least Mike’s private-eye cousin Dirk Darrow – do conjuring tricks.

Dirk Darrow is actually Tim Motley – an Australia-based American actor who has found an enduring character in Dirk Darrow, a classic cigarette-smoking, trench-coat and fedora, ‘30s or ‘40s private investigator with a plethora of one-liners.

Dirk’s shtick is the fact that he’s just as much a card-trick magician as he is a comedic private eye.

Motley stays steadfastly in character as he engages his audience in a series of playing card and numerology magic tricks – that does have the entire audience guessing how the heck Dirk figured that one out. 

Along the way, there’s apparently some kind of plot/story-telling of classic sleuthism in between the magic tricks, as much to advance the Darrow persona that Motley does very, very well.

But when you leave the theatre, it’s the pretty cool mental magic tricks you’ll remember, delivered so smoothly by Motley, who’s played Dirk for so many years he has just about every private-investigator personality trait and throw-away line down pat. 

Good, clean fun.