FRINGE REVIEW – Joe Power, The Man Who Sees Dead People

5 – 30 Aug   1600  (1700)  @ Assembly

Joe Power has studied psychic skills for over ten years, helped police in their investigations and won numerous awards – but we were interested to find out if he could wow the audience of the Edinburgh Fringe.  Attending with me today, was a spiritualist medium to help me decide if Joe was the real deal.  This review is in two parts as the show is broken down into his medium skills via channelling messages and his psychic skills through aura readings.

Part one – medium skills

Joe doesn’t look to any spirit world as he channels messages, he looks direct into the audience.  In a Scouse voice, he tells the audience to put up their hands if anything sounds familiar and the audience are here in the hope that they will get a message from a loved one.  Joe’s starting message is to a row of ‘older’ women in the front and he asks if their parents are in the spirit world.  Without meaning to be rude about their ages, even I could have told you that their parents were no longer in this world.

The women reply no to all the information he is relaying to them, with a brief confirmation when he says “five” which equates to the amount of brothers one of the relatives had.  He channels some distant in-law and mentions a young man, the number 62 and yellow flowers which are all met with a negative response from the  woman who is willing a message from the spirit world.

This routine continues another couple of times with different audience members, once with the subject of two miscarriages.  Joe channels the energy he is receiving and asks if the lady concerned had tests afterwards, before moving on after this ‘success’.   Again, this is common sense and did not convince the audience he was receiving any information from the spirit world.

Joe didn’t give up.   He continued with generic questions to audience members and the next to ‘receive messages’ is a man who told him it meant nothing to over a dozen questions Joe channelled.  At one point a joke is attempted to be cracked to ease the tension in the room, but Joe just comes across as an abrupt man who is not entirely convincing.

Just when the accuracy rate was plummeting downwards, he received a message for one half of our review team.  He asks about a family member in bad health, which is confirmed and if there is a birthday soon – which there is – but that’s about as successful as it gets.

Part two – psychic skills

The last 20 minutes of the show is where personal auras are read.  With my hand in the air like a shot, I volunteer myself, having very recently lost a close relative to the spirit world.  He asks if I like eggs and if I have a scar anywhere.    “Nothing of note”  I reply, but he moves over, to my fellow reviewer again and says the message is for her.  She confirms an eggy choice for breakfast and a scar on her stomach.  A few other details are confirmed by this aura reading, which was the most successful part of the show.

I had to laugh when he asked one volunteer if she had connections in America, to which she replied, “no, but I live in Hong Kong”.  His following message from the spirit world was: “I see you living in a tall building apartment” – yes, indeed the lady did, along with the millions of others in the city.

A German man was then chosen and needed a little help with translation from his friend, but again, rather than dealing with this in a light-hearted manner, Joe ploughed on abrasively asking if he lived on a cliff, or somewhere with a view.  The man stated he lived in a little flat in the middle of the city, the polar opposite and then, with one more aura reading, the show was finished.

Joe thanked the audience for his time and announced he would be in the courtyard selling books and available for private readings.  After his performance, I completely by-passed the stall and discussed the show with other audience members who had been picked, who concluded that their money would have been better spent elsewhere.

Joe claims to be   ’The Man Who Sees Dead People’ and despite going in completely open minded, neither of us were convinced by his medium skills, but there is a little something in his psychic abilities.  Our spiritualist medium concluded with a comment that couldn’t possibly be printed but it’s safe to say your money would be better spent elsewhere during the Fringe.

Tags: Assembly, Edinburgh, fringe, Joe Power, onestar, review

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 8th, 2010 at 00:48 by Miss Edinburgh and is filed under Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Festivals, Fringe2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.