Review
Stage hypnosis is largely dependent on participants’ desire to be silly without consequences, and on the peer pressure exerted by a cheering audience. Peer pressure, though, can easily be a noxious force, and hypnotist Joe Francis’s show proves it. While hypnotism can be in good fun, this show involves participants being cajoled by both Francis and the more eager sections of the audience to take part in a variety of degrading performances against a backdrop of poor taste jokes about homosexuality and rape. By the end of the show, one participant was curled up in fetal position and refusing to fake an orgasm, while parts of the audience were beginning to rebel against Francis’s increasingly crude suggestions. While some people in attendance clearly felt humiliated, Francis is the one who should feel most embarrassed. By Alix Kemp