Comedic hypnotist Paul Royter returned to the City Hall stage last weekend for two shows after a five-year absence from the Island.

From the capacity turnouts on Friday and Saturday nights, it would certainly appear he was sorely missed. The laughter from City Hall theatre may have drowned out the booming nightclub music down on Front Street.

Enthusiastic audiences came out both nights for the show which opened with a performance by a pair of young magicians from the Bermuda School of Magic.

Lady Jen and Smooth Lou used traditional magic props, booming music and sexual tension to create a fast-paced and polished act. The two magicians bounce competitively off one another rather than maintaining the old school dynamic of magician and lovely assistant. The duo demonstrated some cool escape stunts as well as the ever-popular cut a person into three sections trick to the delight of the audience.

They did a good job of warming up the stage for Mr. Royter, who himself then performed an impressive magic trick where he seemed to pluck playing cards — singularly and in hands — straight from the air.

Mr. Royter's warm, "aw-shucks" demeanour probably goes a long toward helping him relax his soon to be hypnosis subjects. His voice reminded me of William H. Macy's character for 'Fargo'; it was soothing and non-threatening.

Opening his act, the hypnotist explained to the audience that he had no intention of embarrassing anyone or doing anything harmful to anyone.

Rather, he said, he puts volunteers in a state of "dreamlike reality", where they are as relaxed as they can possibly be and feel blissfully happy.

Sounded good to me, but I was reviewing and thought my note-taking might be hampered by hypnosis.

Mr. Royter also explained that three groups tend to be inappropriate for hypnosis — children, the insane and the hopelessly drunk. With that, he called on volunteers to come up to the stage and take a seat.

Volunteers were hard to come by at first, with only a few brave souls venturing toward the 20-odd seats arranged on the stage. Mr. Royter soon coaxed more on stage and, once the ball got rolling, volunteers flocked to the aisles — including my soon-to-be husband.

After a preliminary test to filter out and remove from the stage those not susceptible to hypnosis, Mr. Royter forged ahead with a seven-minute induction session for his remaining dozen-plus volunteers.

Over the course of the next hour, he would gradually whittle the volunteers down to four people who seemed born to entertain — they deserved the applause at the end of the night as much as the hypnotist.

Through many of the first exercises, when Mr. Royter had volunteers playing the piano, miming enthusiastic jockeys, swimming or fishing, about half of the participants were active while the remainder simply seemed to be asleep on the stage — including my significant other.

Unfortunately, he was probably the least entertaining hypnotised person ever to grace a stage — dashing my hopes of learning the hypnosis technique as a way to promote domestic bliss. (I did, however, enjoy the spectacle of watching one of the more susceptible male volunteers cuddle him while he slept on the stage.)

Once the volunteers had been weaned down to the four stars, the pace of the show — which ran about 90 minutes without an intermission — really picked up and laughs did not stop until the lights went up.

The three men and one woman left treated the audience to hilarious renditions of Elvis Presley, Britney Spears, Michael Jackson and John Travolta and were taken in and out of consciousness quickly and seamlessly, seeming to remember nothing of what they had just done or said.

A show highlight was when one male and one female volunteer performed a flamenco routine together — which included him surreptitiously bending down to inspect her swaying bottom as he air-strummed his cardboard guitar.

The four also periodically responded to the sound of a car horn by channeling John Barnes in all his waving, love-declaring glory.

When bringing them out of their trances, Mr. Royter gave each a side-splitting closing hypnotic suggestion. The female volunteer left the stage to become convinced the theatre was on fire and she could only alert the audience in her language — a gibberish version of Mandarin Chinese!

One man was persuaded he could not leave the stage because was glued to his seat while another decided mid-way back to his friends that he was in fact the hypnotist.

But all paled next to the young man — and previously bum-gazing flamenco guitarist — who was convinced he had come out for the evening without his trousers!

All the volunteers were great sports and Mr. Royter stayed true to his word of providing a hilarious show which allowed the volunteers to be highly entertaining without being offensive in any way.

He kept the audience rolling with laughter throughout the performance and will hopefully be warmly welcomed back to the Island next year for even more shows.