Scotland

The Secret Room – Lauriston Castle

Perched on the edge of the Firth of Forth, Lauriston Castle is one of those Edinburgh buildings that seems to exist slightly out of time. Parts of the structure date back to the 16th century, though what we see today is largely the result of a late-19th-century transformation, when the castle was remodelled into a richly furnished Edwardian home. Passed to the city in the 1920s, it survives as a carefully preserved domestic time capsule, its rooms dense with objects, stories, and a quietly uncanny sense of lives once very fully lived. I’ve also seen performances here as part of the Edinburgh Horror Festival, and the building proves just as effective for horror as it does for magic, lending both genres an atmosphere that feels earned rather than applied.

That quality is central to The Secret Room, presented as part of the Edinburgh International Magic Festival. This is a promenade-style experience, with the audience moving through a sequence of rooms, each revealing a different magician and a different mode of astonishment. The act of moving through the building is not incidental, it is fundamental to the enjoyment. You are not seated and shown things, you are led, quietly and deliberately, into the castle’s inner life.

The castle is very much a co-star. Its rooms, objects, and atmosphere are not decorative flourishes but active participants in the illusion. It works beautifully as both a magic show and a guided encounter with the building itself, allowing you to get close enough to feel its texture, its history, and that faint but persistent sense that you may have wandered somewhere you weren’t entirely meant to be.

The afternoon kicks off with Tim Licata, in the library, with the playing cards. But this is no murder. Instead, his opening set immediately puts everyone at ease. His sleight of hand is excellent, clean, confident, and delivered with an affable ease that draws the room in rather than showing off at it. The Chicago-born actor turned magician, Licata has that rare ability to make complex technique feel conversational. There was also, for me, a pleasing sense of déjà vu, since I’d encountered Tim in a previous life while working in theatre, and it was a genuine pleasure to see him here in what feels like a natural evolution of performance craft rather than a change of direction.

We then move on to Louis Barlow, in the Oak Room, or Listening Room. Named, as Louis goes on to explain, because there is a concealed turret above, accessed via a hidden door in the window shutter and holes in the ceiling to allow anyone above to eavesdrop. All very cloak and dagger! Barlow’s set is slick and composed and as I am chosen to help with his show stopper final trick I am up close and personal. And bamboozled! It takes a good ten minutes in the car afterwards, with my sleuth daughter to figure it out – which is all part of the fun.

The day concludes with Drew McAdam, whose mind-reading is nothing short of phenomenal. During his piece he somehow picks out both myself and my daughter, despite us being on opposite sides of the room, and proceeds to do exactly what mentalists politely claim not to do, read our minds. It is uncanny, precise, and quietly devastating in its accuracy. If my own response hovered somewhere between bafflement and delighted surrender, my daughter’s mind was completely blown. It was one of those rare moments where astonishment feels genuinely shared across generations, and it lingered long after we left the castle.

What makes The Secret Room work so well is that nothing feels imposed. The magic respects the building, the building enhances the magic, and the audience is treated as an active participant rather than a passive observer.

Not much need for further discussion on this one, a wonderfully curated tour of a stunning castle with magic and mind-reading thrown in gets full marks from the Holstead family!

Reviewer: Greg Holstead

Reviewed: 21st December 2025

North West End UK Rating: