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• Magician doctor prescribes sleight of hand for a dose of wonder Date: August 27 2016 Neelima Choahan Illusion, gravity, and the inner workings of the human body. These are some of the "impossible-seeming things" that fascinate doctor and magician Vyom Sharma. The 29-year-old is part of the Gentleman of Deceit trio, one of the grand finalists in this year's Australia's Got Talent. As a young boy in his native India, Sharma remembers watching magician Jeff McBride perform on television and thinking "how is it possible?" "It just gave me this amazing feeling which is kind of wonder, and awe and astonishment," Sharma says. "And I remember getting this feeling in childhood from several other things. I remember [my dad] told me about gravity and wondering why people don't fall off because Australia is at the bottom of the globe. "I think at its core, that's what magic is really about. Just seeing impossible things, getting that sense of wonder, it's really not about the trick." The sense of wonder led Sharma to follow his mother and become a general practitioner. "She'd told me what red cells were, what white cells were," he said. "Probably in the same way I kind of saw magic, [it] was just that sense of ... want to know how it works, how is it possible?" Sharma started studying to be a doctor, only to have magic reappear in his world. "A fellow medical student showed me some sleight of hand magic tricks," he says. "He had me pick an ace of spades, he gave me another card, the king of hearts, and then he clicked his fingers and the card changed. "I was shown a phenomenon that was seemingly contradicting all laws of physics and biology. "I was just blown away." In his quest to learn more, Sharma stumbled upon the State Library of Victoria's collection of 2000 books on magic. The next four years the pursuit of a medical degree was matched with an education in illusion. Sharma spent an "equal number of hours" in the library's heritage collection reading rooms and the anatomy lab. Performances for family and friends graduated to stints at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. On Saturday, The Gentlemen of Deceit, including Luke Hocking and Alex Dela Rambelje, will perform to 880 people at the Athenaeum Theatre. It will be the biggest night of their career. Practising medicine, Sharma says, has helped put things into perspective about the fear of "bombing on stage". Yet, he says, it took a magician to teach him art is partly why the science of saving lives exists. "[He] said, 'you know, if I [was dying of] cancer, of course I would be really sad, because I have that instinctual will to live but I would also be really sad that I never got to see the new Batman movie, or the Cirque du Soleil show'. "Sure curing cancer is arguably more important than the wonder that can come from a magic trick, but a card trick in a very small way, is a small part of the big reason it is worth curing cancer in the first place.' Gentleman of Deceit will present Three Times the Magic! at the Athenaeum Theatre on August 27 and in Sydney's Opera House on October 15.
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