Friday, November 24, 2017

Brain Candy delights young and old at Bud Gardens

The “oohs” and “aahs” were flying Thursday night at Bud Gardens as science-geeks-extraordinaire Adam Savage and Michael Stevens brought their Brain Candy science show to town.

Savage - known to fans as half of the infamous “Myth Busters” duo, and Stevens - known to YouTube fans for his “VSauce” channel, entertained the crowd ranging from young children to seniors for over two hours with experiment after experiment on the theme of ‘air’.

Both men were extremely likeable and jovial with the crowd that often had trouble containing its excitement (dude in the back… seriously, was all the shouting necessary?). Much of the evening was spent listening to the pair trying to convert their imperial numbers into metric in order to “Canadian-ize” the content. There was a fabulous Canadiana shout-out when Savage revealed that the name “Brain Candy” was taken from a 90’s movie by Canada’s own Kids In The Hall comedy troupe (they were given permission from the Kids to use it).

Between fun stories, eye popping experiments and ping pong balls flying everywhere, there wasn’t a dull moment in the show. Oh, and the dancing…. who could forget all the awkward geeky dancing?

Savage and Stevens brought numerous fans up on stage throughout the show, offering them a chance to have their own moment of fame. Young Emma was even turned into a human Pong, sailing across the stage in a hovercraft made out of hair dryers.

The frenetic pace of the show meant not everything went as planned with tubes ripping apart spewing dry ice ‘smoke’ across the stage at one point, and Michaels taking a nasty fall after slipping on moisture on the stage. Far from seeming like ‘errors’, these moments made the show seem very ‘real’ and far less choreographed than you normally see from performers on the Bud Gardens stage, endearing the performers  to the crowd even more.

This ‘Myth Busters meets Mr. Wizard’ show kept everyone anticipating the next cool thing, from enormous smoke rings sailing up into the rafters of the arena, to ping pong ball cannons firing balls farther than anyone knew they could travel. There was truly something for everyone in this show. Even this non-science mind was blown away by the sights and sounds of… well… science.

Thank you to Bud Gardens for continuing to bring a wide variety of programming into London. Who knew science could be so fun??

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