The world has become too real. We no longer believe that eclipses are caused by dragons eating up the sun, that eggshells must be broken ‘lest witches make boats thereof’ or that dog-headed people roam the villages of distant lands.

Undoubtedly, as the secrets of the world around us are revealed as cold, hard facts, the magic that once kept us on edge has vanished.

Yet our lust for the inexplicable still burns deep and our primeval – or is it medieval? – need to be in the presence of something we cannot fathom still entices us. So much so that when empromotions announced that the world-famous illusionist DMC was coming to Malta there was a flurry of excitement at meeting this magician and experiencing his performance up close and personal.

DMC is short for Drummond Money-Coutts, which is the actual name of this 28-year-old illusionist who, as his name astutely suggests, comes from quite a wealthy family. In fact, Drummond is the heir of the Latymer Baronetcy and is the son of Crispin Money-Coutts – the 9th Baron Latymer – and his wife, Lucy Deedes.

His obsession with magic started off when he was aged just eight; and 20 years on, his fans include Queen Elizabeth II, whose review was: “DMC will go far.” She was right, of course. Not only is he starring in his own National Geographic series called Beyond Magic with DMC, that is airing in over 170 countries, including Malta.

Having said that, if there’s one thing my generation has had to learn, it’s that between fame and talent there is more than just a fine line and, I have to admit, that at the very beginning I was quite sceptical about the whole thing. After all, although magic is a very interesting concept, magic tricks can often get very boring – and, even worse, predictable.

That, thankfully, wasn’t the case with this event, Up Close & Personal with DMC, which left us all open-mouthed and, quite literally, begging for more. DMC, in fact, does something that works wonders: he involves his audience.

As the name of the event appropriately states, the guests – often in groups of four or five – got to sit down with DMC for around five minutes and all of his tricks required his immediate audience’s as well as onlookers’ engagement. And that really made a difference.

Each guest had an individual time slot with DMC.

He had a range of about eight to 15 tricks and, although I, along with the other guests, saw some of them more than once, they were so well-executed that they left us in awe every single time.

My favourite, which is one I got to do myself, was the one in which he asked me to write four different numbers (ranging from one to 10 and excluding zero) on a piece of paper which I then kept.

DMC managed to turn a group of over 100 adults into children and Club 22 into a playground

He then shuffled the deck of cards and got another guest to cut the deck into four and the cards at the top were exactly my number – 6742. It was absolutely mind-boggling.

His genius was definitely aided by the ambience and I have to admit that when it comes to the space it was absolutely perfect for setting the scene for the performance.

The experience kicked off as soon as the doors of the lift opened and a dimly lit Club 22, with its iconic view of Malta shining in, greeted us along with a complimentary glass of Mionetto Prosecco.

The room, set up with a number of tables donning ice buckets and bottles of champagne and vodka, looked magical... and the dress-code – although not followed by everyone – really aided in creating the over feeling of luxury, decadence and even the sense of the occult.

It almost felt like being transported back to the 1920s when Ouija boards and tarot cards were the height of sophistication.

The whole room seemed to be buzzing with excitement throughout the whole night and at no point during the show did DMC have less than 20 people huddled up around his table gasping, wowing and clapping.

His storytelling skills through cards, books and pens really created a sense of occasion and the whole performance went down a treat.

One thing that is truly noteworthy is the fact that the show ran for much longer than it should have. Starting at six o’clock in the afternoon, the show was meant to end 90 minutes later, but DMC was still going strong and doing group and one-to-one sessions at nine in the evening.

It was great to see that his audience’s satisfaction came before the schedule. What was also great was the fact that, once the show was over, he actually showed some members how he does his tricks – and that openness is remarkable.

However, there were moments when it was almost impossible to see what DMC was doing due to the crowd around him.

As one guest pointed out to me, it would have been a good idea to have had the whole performance screened in real-time to allow those sitting down to see what was going on.

Even so, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I’m still impressed by how DMC managed to turn a group of over 100 adults into children and Club 22 into a playground that allowed us to express our innate love for magic!

DMC was brought to Malta by empromotions and is available for private events.