I wonder what kind of haphazard career planning leads you to be any kind of children's entertainer? It's certainly not a role I'd fancy after watching the Magician show at Dixon Library on Thursday.
It wasn't that he was particularly bad (although he was no David Blaine) but whatever they were paying him wasn't anything like enough. I was sure that had he been a real magician he would have made himself disappear long before the end of his act.
The library had somewhat cruelly hemmed him into the children's book section of the library, literally in a corner with no escape. There, stood somewhere between 'The Hungry Caterpillar' and 'Dear Zoo', he had become surrounded by 50 onlooking expectant kids ranging from 2 to 10 together with a smattering of their school holiday embattled parents. No way out. Trapped. General Custer had it really easy compared to this guy.
He put on a good show, all the usual stuff with cards and rope and magic boxes, but the poor chap was often performing within a couple of metres of the kids on the front row. This meant that children (sometimes egged on by their parents it has to be said) would jump up uninvited out of the crowd to check in his box of tricks or under his coat, or in his hat so as to discredit the particular trick. Even his white rabbit wasn't safe from their clutches.
I noticed that he began nervously checking his watch with increasing regularity throughout his act.
In the end he made it through his 45 minute set (timed to the second) then he speedily packed up his tricks and dashed for the exit. The crowd of children slouched away, in less than a week it would be poor teachers who would be under their expectant gaze and they wouldn't even have a rope knot-trick to fall back on.
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