LADY MAGIC Comes to the Pleasance Dome

American comedy provocateur Natalie Palamides is teaming up with Las Vegas-based circus trailblazers Spiegelworld to build their next multimillion-dollar Las Vegas Strip spectacle, live and in full view of audiences at the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Lady Magic, written and directed by Palamides, is a work in progress that will premiere at the Pleasance Dome from 30 July to 25 August. This is a wild, unpredictable anti-magic magic show still in the making - where Fringe audiences will play a vital role in shaping whether it flies or flops.

Lady Magic follows Spiegelworld's smash-hit, Vegas mainstay Atomic Saloon Show, which was developed at Fringe in 2019 and became one of the most successful Edinburgh shows of the last 10 years. Still in the preliminary stages of development, the company's latest venture offers a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse into how a major Las Vegas production is born, featuring a hand-picked cast of comedic misfits who will build, breakdown and re-build the show throughout its Fringe season.

Throughout history, the magician's assistant has put up with a lot: being sawn in half, dodging flying knives - all while wearing high heels, a skimpy costume, and a smile. Lady Magic is a show where the assistants finally get their chance to make the magician disappear, in increasingly desperate, deadly ways. It's a show of foolish mayhem (and illusions that wouldn't fool anyone) for anyone who has ever hated their boss.

Los Angeles-based actor, comedian, and writer Natalie Palamides is no stranger to Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Nate – A One Man Show won the 2018 Total Theatre Award and went on to be commissioned by Amy Poehler's production company for release on Netflix. Described as “outrageously entertaining” by The Guardian, her 2024 show WEER, in which she played both roles of a male and female couple, won Best Show at the inaugural List Festival Awards.

Natalie Palamides said, “For Lady Magic we've put together a wily cast of brave, silly, clever idiots who both myself and Spiegelworld have worked with over many years. After a series of development workshops in Las Vegas and New York, we'll be putting the show together for the first time in Edinburgh in the week or so leading up to Fringe. This is a chance for audiences to see how a major Las Vegas show gets created - in an unpredictable, messy, failure-ridden clown laboratory of exploding test tubes and very frightened guinea pigs and Las Vegas producers. We'll be flying by the seat of our pants, things will change every night, and we'll pretty much exclusively be using cheap magic tricks from the local mall. Sorry, not sorry. This show will be what you get when you ask a clown who has no experience with magic to make a magic show. It'll be a wild ride, and at the very least, will be a very good time. Set your expectations low, and I guarantee you'll leave on a high.”

Spiegelworld has been producing its unique brand of adult-circus shenanigans for close to 20 years, with three, long-running shows currently playing on the Las Vegas Strip, including Absinthe and Atomic Saloon Show. Talks are already underway for Lady Magic to be the company's next major Las Vegas resident production, after its Edinburgh development season.