David Haig's Magic Explores Conan Doyle-Houdini Rift
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- David Haig premieres 'Magic' at Chichester Festival Theatre (24 April–16 May), a play dramatising the friendship and falling-out between Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini, directed by Lucy Bailey with promised stage illusions.
- Haig admitted he sourced the idea by Googling 'interesting unusual relationships in British history,' and will play Conan Doyle himself in the production.
- The play centres on Conan Doyle's attempts to contact his son Kingsley, killed in WWI, through medium Mina Crandon, and on Houdini assembling 'an army of debunkers' to expose her as a fraud.
- Haig frames the work's central question as defining 'magic' — whether spiritual faith qualifies, or whether deception is required — and stressed that Conan Doyle's belief 'is not played as comedy.'
- Haig said this may be his last play, expressing uncertainty about continuing as a playwright in his 70s while citing Ian McKellen and Judi Dench as performers who remain active.
- Haig's 2004 play 'My Boy Jack' also dealt with a son killed in WWI; he links that recurring theme partly to the death of his own sister at age 22, 44 years ago.
Why it matters: A 70-year-old playwright-actor with a track record including 'My Boy Jack' and 'Pressure' (now a forthcoming Hollywood film) is staging a piece that returns to the same WWI-grief territory that has long shadowed his work — and has signalled it may be his final play. The Chichester run is limited to 24 April–16 May, giving audiences a narrow window to see Haig in a dual writer-star role he frames as a potential coda.
