Sally Morgan is into her eleventh year touring as Psychic Sally; she does over 165 shows a year and travels more than 34,000 miles across the UK. Her 10th Anniversary tour is taking her to Australia this year and she has announced that she is participating in her very first psychic cruise.
Sally’s show is different to other theatre shows in that the theatre lights are on once the show starts as Sally needs to see her audience. She is assisted by a cameraman on stage who is filming the people in the audience she gives readings to and their images are depicted on the large screen on the stage behind Sally.
Sally firstly gave the audience a “physic wave” and then explained how the show works. She described herself as a Medium and said she gets names and thoughts in her head as well as scenes in her mind’s eye about people, which she passes on. She said the evening was all about energy from people who have died and that “They walk with us, they are the umbilical cord of love”.
Once Sally received a name she connected it to another name and then asked the audience if it meant anything to them. “Peggy, Jim, does this mean anything to anyone?” she asked. Someone shouted “I’m Peggy and Jim was my dad” and a microphone was quickly passed to Peggy. “Yes” Sally said and “Jim’s passed over hasn’t he? He’s here with us now”. Sally started rubbing her head, saying “I’m getting a pain in the left hand side of my head, did he have a stroke? No wait a mo, I’m seeing a black Alsatian dog and Jim’s stroking the left hand side of his head. It’s a big head. He loved that dog. I don’t want to frighten you but Jim’s giving us a message about the dog, there may be something wrong with his head”. So you get the gist of her performance.
She gave approximately four readings before the interval and then after a costume change she was back on. She started by picking out a photograph from one of the big glass jars which were on the stage. Before the performance the audience were encouraged to leave a photograph of a family member or friend who had passed away or to write a message or a question on what Sally calls a Love Letter (a white card) which she will select from the jars during the performance. She selected a photograph and gave a reading about a man she said “Was a lovely man, someone who was loved by everyone”. “Did he used to go down the market?” she asked his wife “Yeah” she replied “He used to go down Preston market”. It was all very innocuous stuff. After the reading Sally kissed the photograph and told us that all the photographs are burned after the performance and she puts the ashes on a small memorial plot in her garden in which her pet dogs are buried.
She then asked what ‘A pink handbag’ meant to anyone, and then changed it to the name ‘Pinkie’. ‘Who’s Clive’ she asked and what does ‘Grant mean to anyone? It could be a surname’. There were no responses.
Somewhat unsurprisingly I didn’t hear one derogatory reading. All the people she gave readings about were all ‘lovely’ people. None of them had given their other halves a bad time or had been unpopular with their family and friends. I’m not sure what the people who enjoy these shows get from the readings. Most of the time Sally will only tell them how they died or what illness they were suffering from. Sometimes I heard that the people passed away without pain or quickly or that they wanted to go so I presume people must take some comfort from that.
Sally is a Medium to celebrities and cites in her website that “She went on to help Princess Diana, Katie Price and actress Uma Thurman”. It doesn’t state what help was given but presumably they took some form of comfort in what she told them. Sally says her shows ‘Will be psychic dynamite and although they are undoubtedly entertaining, there is also a very serious side, which is to give audience members messages of hope and love from the other side’. I can’t say I witnessed this at last night’s performance. Sally is a very pleasant 68 year old who is engaging with a sunny disposition. She attempts to keep her routine light-hearted with jokes and witticisms with a smile on her face. I may be a cynic but I didn’t leave impressed or converted.
The show is billed as ‘Investigational and for the purpose of entertainment’ and that is how I experienced it, as purely entertainment. ‘Pinkie’ and the ‘Pink handbag’ vanished into the ether with ‘Clive’ and ‘Grant’.
Reviewer - Anne Pritchard
on - 24/5/19
I wrote a novel a few years ago called The Medium about a psychic. I went to see Sally’s show in manchester and got the same experience. All guess work, very underwhelming. At one point she blamed a mother for her sons motorcycle accident saying he rushed out in anger after an argument with her. She kept relying on her glass jar of photos and messages, but mostly just shouted out names hoping someone would take the bait. Very underwhelming but I took away a lot for my novel!
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