Magician Norman Ng opened his show “The Norman Magic Experience” by turning a doodle of a bowling ball into an actual bowling ball and dropping it onto the stage with a loud thud. What followed was a plethora of illusions that ranged from mind reading to spoon bending to card and rope tricks.
“I’m primarily a sleight of hand artist,” Ng said. “So my show is more about misdirection than it is about spectacle. I try to make up for that by injecting it with a lot of personality and jokes.”
The audience, which filled most of the Student Center Ballroom, did not seem to mind the lack of “spectacle,” loudly applauding and cheering throughout the show.
“I laughed; I was amazed,” junior interactive media major A.J. Hambly said. “I particularly enjoyed the part with the phone.”
In the middle of the show, Ng requested the cellphone of an audience member and then smashed it to pieces with a baseball bat. The cellphone later reappeared, in perfect condition, inside of an unopened can of Pringles.
“It was a pretty interesting show,” sophomore nursing major Dakota Zamora said. “Not only that, but it was also pretty funny. I really wasn’t expecting to laugh that much at a magic show.”
In between tricks, Ng would riff on himself and the audience. Before his mind reading segment, Ng asked the audience if they’ve ever known who was calling before they answered the phone. A couple of people raised their hands.
“For some of you, that’s ESP, or extra-sensory perception,” Ng said. “But for others that’s just caller ID.”
Ng’s jokes seemed to win the audience over as much as his tricks did. Ng said that perhaps that’s because there isn’t a big difference between the two.
“Magic and comedy have the same formula,” Ng said. “You have to carefully take your audience down a path and then surprise them, either with a good punch line or a conjured bowling ball.”
