Review: Being Brainwashed Into Joy in Derren Brown’s ‘Secret’
Ben BrantleySeptember 15, 2019: Yet every time I visit the dapper Mr. Brown, I leave in a lighter, less-polluted mood — brainwashed in the most positive sense of the term. That’s because this British stage performer (who is also a television star and best-selling author across the Atlantic) doesn’t use his gifts to assert his dominance over those of us who are telepathically challenged. Well, O.K., maybe he does a little bit. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to hold a big stage by himself and leave us all slack-jawed at his ability to do things that he made us swear not to talk about. (His may be a benign presence, but I still wouldn’t want to cross him.) He insists, though, that he is no oracle — and he consults the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines such a being as infallible. His persona is pointedly that of a fallible everyman, who has simply trained himself to observe his fellow humans more carefully than most of us do.
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