Crazy crime capers _{by Madelaine Empson}

Have you ever seen a famous private eye solve eight crimes in eight hours through interrogations wrought with jazz and beat poetry? No?

Well, investigate your priorities and head to Circus Bar on Sunday the 4^th of February for a one-of-a-kind endurance feat where one performer will grow increasingly delirious between the hours of 12 and 8pm.

The Great Magnus Marathon sees the return of the one, the only Magnus Steele, a character created for an award-nominated, improvised crime-thriller by theatre-maker Austin Harrison. Harrison is bringing Magnus back for the first time in two years to perform a new show every hour, on the hour where you the audience play the victims, the suspects, and the witnesses in the crime(s) of the century.

So, why is Magnus coming back after two years, and why oh why for eight hours?

“Because I really love the show, I love playing the character, and after doing lots of behind-the-scenes work on other people’s shows in 2023 I was desperate to get back onstage in 2024”, Harrison explains.

Harrison has never performed eight shows in a row before but wanted to test his mental and physical fitness as well as find a new way to stretch the Magnus opus to the limit – “to break it and put it back together and find new joyful approaches that will give the show a new life”.

Ultimately, Harrison is making this marathon effort to raise funds to perform in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival this April. Come for an hour, pop in throughout the day, or settle in for a full day of Magnus madness to help him jump the ditch.