'Exclude the impossible and what is left, however improbable, must be the truth.'



Harry Houdini is the greatest illusionist the world has ever known. Arthur Conan Doyle is the creator of literature's most brilliant detective, Sherlock Holmes. 



When their mutual admiration blossoms into a profound friendship, they discover a shared obsession with spiritualism. But while Conan Doyle believes fervently in the psychic world and the promise of reunion with his dead son, Houdini is determined to demonstrate it's a cruel fraud. Which of them will be proved right: the genius writer of fiction or the master magician?



Based on extraordinary historical events, David Haig's play Magic asks what we're prepared to believe, and why. It was first performed at Chichester Festival Theatre in 2026, directed by Lucy Bailey and starring Hadley Fraser as Houdini and Haig himself as Conan Doyle.