THEATRE REVIEW: Brainiac Live ★★★

Brainiac Live
Garrick Theatre, London
31st July - 1st September 2019

Explosions, flashing lights, and loud bangs is a recipe for success of any human being of any age; the ability to see it in a live setting is even more compelling, which makes Brainiac Live a perfect addition to any science fan's dream, but though the experiments ending in smokes and prizes grip the screaming, excited audience of young kids, the lack of chemistry and energy from our scientists on stage, fuelled by fake corpsing, starts to deteriorate into tedious fun, and mostly relies on visual effects to keep the children's focus engaged.

At a running time of one hour, we are treated to exploding barrels, microwaves, and canons shooting out t-shirts and socks. There's a distinct lack of audience participation, except for the final experiment which brought a father and son on stage, and furthermore the graphics in which try to hide experiment scene changes loses the attention span of the audience promised a show full of pyros, and not watching a man seemingly electrocuted on stage via a fence.

Overall, though Brainiac Live delivers on the explosions when they are presented on stage, the draw out explanations and lack of charisma on stage from the scientists really let's down the whole atmosphere, with fidgeting children in their seats showing that a couple of load bangs can not uphold an hour's worth of visual entertainment!