Christopher Howell Magic

I’ve been working behind the scenes since May and then performing since August when previews opened at the new immersive London magic show Rhythm & Ruse. The show has transformed The Vaults Theatre into a club like no other called The Starling. From the moment you walk through the mirrored corridor, you know you’ve entered another world. With a twinkle in their eye, a ‘Society Member’ plants a cocktail in your hand to welcome you. You soon suspect that many surprises are in store as you begin your journey to ‘re-enchantment’.

Diverse Magician Cast

If you’ve wondered where you can watch magicians in the UK, Rhythm & Ruse is a great place to start. It boasts the most diverse cast of magicians in any London show today. This includes London’s own Laura London and Britain’s Got Talent star Damien O’Brien. You may also catch international magic champions Daan Ho and Yollin Lee. Or Ukranian Instagram cardistry sensation Yev Moskalov and so many other brilliant magicians who fill the cast. One moment you’re being swept away by the jazz on stage. Then, as the applause subsides, a magician appears at your table. They perform interactive and jaw-dropping close-up magic with you at your table. Seven minutes later, they vanish into the darkness before another spectacle begins.

For International Women’s Day, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to chat with my long-time collaborator Desireé Kongerød about her job as a magician’s assistant. She talks about the secret work of an assistant, the politics of cutting a woman in half, Lucille Ball and our new play that breaks the stereotypes of the job with a wrecking ball. I hope you enjoy the interview!

Christopher: How did you become a magician’s assistant? 

Desireé: When you and I started, it was my first time performing magic. The year before we met, I had performed an aerial and dance routine for a corporate events producer named Arthur Somerset. The following year he wanted to do magic themed events at Old Billingsgate here in London. When Arthur told me his plans, I figured I could find a magician and I could play their assistant.

Arthur was happy about the idea of a mixed arts show and I auditioned four magicians. I realised it was a strange concept for magicians to be auditioned by the future assistant. But you were totally up for collaborating to make something new. I signed the Magic Circle’s oath of never revealing any magic secrets and my career as a magician’s assistant began. That autumn we developed our first Norvil & Josephine routine. It was a 10-minute magic, dance and aerial show. It appeared during December 2006 for thousands of people coming to enjoy themselves at Old Billingsgate. Although I’d say most magician’s assistants became one by being a dancer who met a magician looking for an assistant!

To keep reading about the politics of being cut in half, a story about Lucille Ball waking from a trance that Orson Wells put her under, and much more, read the full article here.

What are the top questions I get asked as a magician when I'm out performing? People are always curious to ask magicians questions. So here are a handful of the top magician questions I get asked as I go around performing as a London magician and beyond. If you have a question not on the list, email it in. If it’s popular, maybe I'll put it on the list as well.

WHAT IS THE MAGIC CASTLE?

The Magic Castle is a private club in the foot of the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles that was opened in 1961 by Milt Larsen. It’s known as the ‘mecca of magicians’. I loved performing there and here you can check out my Magic Castle show. Since it’s a member’s club, to get inside, you have to be invited by a member. So scrub your contact list to see who could invite you! Each week at The Castle features a new line up of a wide variety of magicians from close-up to stage. Here’s a deep-dive into Magic Castle history as well.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD MAGICIAN?

Actually, the answer a magician will give you has a lot to do with what they value when they watch magicians perform. After you spend time exploring magic and magicians, you start to find out what ‘ranks highly’ for you. Many would say what makes a good magician is a mix of originality, skill, artistry, cutting edge techniques, an interesting performance persona, rapport with the audience and new ideas.

ARE SOME MAGIC TRICKS REAL?

A handful of emails come into the office every week from people who want to know how to do ‘real magic’. Magic tricks are a combination of psychology and clever secret techniques known only by magicians. If someone tells you that their magic tricks are real, they ...

Your Halloween event entertainment needs to send chills down your guests’ spines and make them wonder at the mysteries of the ‘other side’. This show is an immersive exploration of ghost stories and haunting tales which culminates in a recreation of a Victorian seance. Will the spirits come through the veil to communicate with us?

While much Day of the Dead and Halloween events for adults are loud and raucous, this séance show goes in the other direction. It is perfect for events that can provide an intense, secluded and intimate environment ready to come to life with the storytelling and spirit theatre of the show.

This show can be adapted to fit a variety of circumstances including corporate Halloween entertainment projects, ‘haunted house’ experiences, psychic evenings, or private viewings in homes or other venues. Apart from performing his shows for private Halloween events, Christopher also presents public Halloween shows each year so do get in touch about public performances as well!

The pie-in-the-sky vision with my show partner Desireé Kongerød early this year was to create a new show called the Top Hat Act. It would be designed for delivery in the uncertain entertainment landscape of the pandemic. This was the gist of the brief we put together for the Arts Council application... and we got it through! The idea stage was the easy bit which lead to a challenging journey through uncharted territory. Part of the work would be to develop our existing Norvil & Josephine show and the rest would be to adapt the fresh goods for a mobile stage scenario. As part of this, we would also take off for a residency at Out There Arts in Great Yarmouth, a laboratory for adapting performances to outdoor scenarios. They say the best thing for creativity is a deadline, so with a calendar full of them, we hit the ground running.

  ... Check out the video at the bottom of this page...

As your Zoom party entertainer, magician Christopher Howell will transform your meeting into an event. Online meetings risk boring people because that in-person buzz factor is missing. But even if you can not meet in person, everyone at your online party deserves some fun. This virtual live magic show brings everyone near and makes distance disappear.

“Four months later, my friends still talk about your show. Thank you so much.” - R. Williams

Eight months ago, I wouldn’t have believed it if you told me that in only a few months I would have a Zoom magic show to entertain audiences around the world. But as John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” As everything changed in warp speed for every person on the planet on a macro scale, one (very, very, very) small part of that was that a magician could no longer share their magic.

What do Lady Gaga, a string of Broadway musicals and Harry Potter all have in common? The answer is Paul Kieve, a magician who creates magic behind-the-scenes. He has accumulated an impressive list of projects. All of these use magic that helps tell stories. I studied a degree in theatre and storytelling has always interested me. Paul uses magic to help tell stories. So I’ve always thought some of the most magical magic out there is the stuff that Paul does.

I didn’t know it would be as if Benedict Cumberbatch was waiting for me. He could have been right there at the theatre as I cycled over for my Hackney Empire Tour. It’s one of my favourite weekends of the autumn: the Open House London tours this month. The Hackney Empire is about five miles from central London and is a spectacular chocolate box of a theatre. It is one of the great success stories of a UK variety theatre returning from the dead. I also wanted to go because as a stage magician I’ve always had a soft spot for the place. It was the first theatre where we did a public show of my magic act Norvil & Josephine in a variety revue there in September 2007. But here’s the thing…

While Mr Cumberbatch wasn’t actually there that day, the Open House tour struck me as a sort of Sherlock Holmes examination of this gem of a theatre. Our guide walked us through each detail. It provided clues that unlocked the imagination. I felt how it was to be one of the 2,800 people who packed it out twice a night during the first decades of the 1900s.

So here’s a mystery tour a-la Mr. Holmes. Below are five capers that were solved during the tour.

Magic performed close up is more popular now than probably ever before. Among the most trendy, on one side of the Atlantic we have Dynamo with his street magic specials in the UK. On the other side we find America’s Got Talent winner Matt Franco who went on to do a Vegas stage show full of close up magic material. Of all the types of magic out there, this one has hit a chord with the public in exciting ways. Close up magic’s current place in the entertainment firmament came from a fascinating turn of events that brought us to where we are today. So let’s geek out a few minutes together as we explore the back alleys of Magicopolis and this short history of close up magic.

Little do most people know, close up magic has actually been entertaining and delighting audiences for millennia. The Roman writer ...

It’s not every day that I get asked to appear in a film where I’ll cut myself in half. So I was thrilled when the Italian luxury menswear brand Canali 1934 asked me to do exactly that. They booked me to consult on and perform in their short film produced for the holidays. It’s been a trend with luxury brands to produce high-end cinematic ‘featurettes’ lately.  This is the latest one by Canali at the bottom of this post.

The production team decided to make a short film about their beautiful products. The premise was to be that a magician called The Incredible Mr. C, (who I played) would conjure up elegant Canali gifts as part of his magical repertoire.

This is a story unfolding in real time of how magic is reinventing itself. Many other types of entertainment hit a wall with the coronavirus crisis. But magicians have found a way forward through the computer screen. Almost overnight magic has transformed into a new type of interactive online socially distanced entertainment. The best online magicians have found entertaining new ways to reach through the screen. They exploit the video chat format to create new kinds of magic to grip audiences. Why do I think this has worked better for magic than other performance arts? Well that is part of this fascinating story…

KeepMagic has been especially popular on television the past few years. This month one of my magic acts shared some of the television magic fun with Ant & Dec on ITV. It was for Britain’s Got Talent. It’s one of the most-watched shows on British television. Magicians have gone through to the finals the past few years (and last year, a BGT magician won). Anyways it’s all very popular and when I’m out performing magic, people always ask me how the BGT magician did it? Of course, that would be telling!

Building on the popularity of the series, the eleventh season of the show has rolled around this year. BGT wanted a magician to appear in their commercial for the new season. So in March my act ‘Norvil & Josephine‘ wa s invited by the the Britain’s Got Talent production team to perform in the latest BGT commercial. 

“If you build it, they will come” was the mantra that Desireé and I were chanting to ourselves throughout the backbreaking eight full days we spent constructing our latest marvel. And now we have it: our very own magic street theatre tent! It’s a portable home for our beloved double-act of magic, acrobatics and singing: Norvil & Josephine. (The photo below was before the pandemic however)

The show’s been touring for over ten years.  So far though we’ve always played our comedy magic act in theatres and indoor venues. This time, we were putting together a routine for a magic street theatre. So we honed a repertoire that’s happy with breezes (or gales) and the ever-so-occasional ‘misty’ summer days in Britain. And here’s the video…

Films about magicians have been a perennial favourite throughout the movie halls of fame. From animated comedy shorts to full length mysteries, magicians in movies with a good screenplay never fail to capture the public’s imagination. I’ve made a list of what I think are the seven best magic movies cranked out in the past 20 years. Let me know in the comments below what you think of these and if you have a favourite one that I missed…

DEALT (2017)

The most recent film on my magic movies list is a documentary. Don’t let the ‘D’ word scare you. I’ve met people who don’t particularly like documentaries or magic who loved  this film. I did too. Sensitively directed by Luke Korem, this film follows the mind-blowing story of ‘card sharp’ Richard Turner.  It’s an inspiring story of incredible passion, obsession and dedication. It’s about a man known amongst magicians as a ninja with cards. And of course now I must say why his...