Alexander Yuen first had the idea to run a cocktail magic bar 15 years ago. He was opening for another magician at a Japanese magic bar in Singapore, but when that magician returned to Japan, he couldn’t find a bar who was interested in having him do something similar. “I think 15 years ago, magic wasn’t as cool as it is right now, so it didn’t get a positive response,” he said.
Three years ago, the general public’s interest in magic had grown. Alexander also had his own production company by then, and when they moved into a new space in an industrial part of Singapore, he and his team custom-built a bar designed for magic and dubbed the venue The Magic Bar. It was a success. “People would actually travel to an obscure part of Singapore, to a rundown building, just to get this kind of magic experience,” Alexander said. “That really gave us a lot more confidence.”
About a year ago, that confidence led Alexander and his team to move The Magic Bar to the Central Area of Singapore. The new venue has higher overhead but also has advantages over the old location. “In the old space, we would never get walk-ins, obviously by nature of how we were located,” Alexander explained, “but right now we do have guests who will just walk in and say, ‘Oh, there’s a magic bar, I want to buy tickets to watch the show.’”
A Magic Bar, but not necessarily bar magic
The Magic Bar is an intimate space. There’s a long table, with up to 22 guests sitting in two rows in front of it. The venue is open Tuesdays through Sundays, with different performers each night. The type of magic (or mentalism) visitors will see varies by performer, but they all have one thread in common. “What we really try to do is to have these longer format shows… to be a bit more theatrical, to focus a lot more on storytelling,” Alexander explained, acknowledging that this setup is different from what one might expect from a more casual cocktail magic experience.
Left: Kai Emmanuel performs, courtesy of Theatre of Wonder; Right: Alexander Yuen, who owns the bar, in action, courtesy of Nana
Five magicians currently rotate in the space: Alexander, David Fillary, Stefan Ebinger, Kai Emmanuel, and the mentalist Nique Tan. The typical show is in English (though Alexander and Nique can also perform in Mandarian, if that’s the language everyone in the crowd speaks) and lasts about one hour and 20 minutes, with a brief intermission in the middle. A little over half of the audience members are locals rather than tourists, something that’s rare to see in a Singapore venue.
The drinks at The Magic Bar are also treated very seriously. “We are really just trying to make really good cocktails, so people do actually come for cocktails as well, and people are generally very pleasantly surprised about the drinks.”
This effort is intentional, as Alexander considers the experience of visiting his venue to include more than just the magic. “It’s always about a strong sense of hospitality,” he said, “letting them feel welcome, letting them feel like they are really part of the show.”
Pushing the limits
Alexander doesn’t want to increase the size of The Magic Bar, even though some have urged him to do so. “We can still remember everyone’s name at the end of a show, but once you go past [20 or so guests] it feels different, and that’s not what we want to be.”
He does, however, want to explore having a venue in their new neighborhood designed with magic in mind. “In this new space, we really have to just work with a normal table and really just try to adapt our performing style with it,” he said. “In the future, we really want to either look for a new space or renovate the space to allow magicians to really stretch what they can do… I think that’s really the philosophy of The Magic Bar in Singapore. A lot of us are commercial roving magicians or stage magicians, and there are a lot of things that we can’t do. For example, in a roving corporate setting, you can’t get into a long story and have a big payoff at the end. People want it quick, people want it fast. But at The Magic Bar, you can do really elaborate setups, really elaborate storytelling that finally leads to a big payoff at the end. So we really want to push our limits and see how the space can support us in the future.”
The Magic Bar
Inspired by the intimate traditions of Japan’s most exclusive magic bars in Tokyo and Ginza, magic unfolds mere inches away. From Tuesday to Saturday, The Magic Bar showcases four distinct performances, each offering a unique encounter with world-class sleight of hand.