A Eulogy for Cocktail Magique
Sam Sand Roman for Cocktail Magique by Company XIV
It looked like any other bar, but the patrons and performers knew it was anything but. For years, Company XIV’s Cocktail Magique entranced audiences with its unique combination of burlesque, magic, and an almost irresponsible level of alcohol. Everyone was friendly and in costume from the moment you entered the space. It was cozy; two rows of couches directly in front of the stage were separated from four person tables by a small aisle. The decor was an eclectic mix of Vegas, a dive bar, and a nice junk shop, and the haze made the combination intoxicating.
If you splurged or got lucky enough to be upgraded to the couches, you were in for a night you would barely remember. A cast member would unlock a shot stored in the table in front of you. Then, they poured gin into a vintage tea cup topped with a candied flower and a spritz of edible perfume. The performer would show you two essential things: a vault, locked by two letter dials, embedded in the table, and little brass mice with colorful light bulbs, upon which rested cards. Both of these would be essential for the magic to come.
The audience dressed to impress in a variety of ways - leather jackets, lace body suits, sparkly dresses. They chattered, some clearly long time patrons, some friends of performers, and some interested tourists who got a great deal on TodayTix. Everyone was electrified by the unique space and the possibilities of what was to come.
Onyx Noir’s banana and martini glass number was the opening of Cocktail Magique starting in 2023. After her glittery finish, champagne coupes descended from the sky to be filled by cast members from the bottomless champagne bottle pouring onstage while Marley Armstrong serenaded the audience. Every night, a magician (Caroline Gayle, at the end of the run) asked two audience members to draw letter cards to unlock the table vault. The code failed, every night. On the final performance, the incorrect code was F - U. Then, Gayle asked for someone with a large cash bill to write their name and hand her the bill. A different audience member was instructed through making a cocktail and the magician ate the bill and drank the cocktail, before making the money reappear in the cocktail shaker. Upon reflection, this was somehow the least jaw dropping event of the night.
Curtis Brown for Cocktail Magique by Company XIV
Lydia Wilts, a clown in a hoop skirt decorated with balloons, came out onto the stage. Wilts popped some balloons on purpose, made little balloon dogs, and then the weirdness began. She ran a pin through a balloon, not popping it. She swallowed a balloon. Half the audience was struck absolutely silent. Wilts topped that – she flossed a balloon through her nose and mouth. Syrena was rolled out on a cart singing, and ascends to the stage to balance a tray with a full punch bowl on her head and stomach as she belly danced and lowered herself to the stage without spilling a drop. Everything was glittery and impossible. The tricks continued – Armstrong sang again, this time punctuated by a transforming deck of giant cards, and Gayle led the audience to rip the tarot cards in front of their mice and blindly discard halves until two were remaining, constituting one card of destiny.
At intermission, the floor was littered with confetti and tarot card halves, and the audience was buzzing again. People lined up to get more drinks at the bar and try to figure out, in hushed tones, how the performers did it all.
Armstrong came out again for act two with a classic fan and song performance. PhillVonAwesome picked a glass up with his feet and placed it on his forehead, before beginning another card trick: one giant card became the queen of clubs. Noir began an aerial act on a spinning club, and took her corset off upside down. If Ginger Rogers could do everything Fred Astaire could do backwards and in heels, the Cocktail Magique performers could do things that no one else could imagine upside down, in heels and covered in glitter.
The second to last trick was a cocktail builder. Sitting at the back of the stage for the entire performance was a giant wheel with a big red envelope. Audience members would say different ingredients, and Noir and Wilts would pin the suggestions to the board. The wheel was spun, and PhillVonAwesome threw darts to make the cocktail. Two audience members were asked to give dirty words to name the cocktail, and then the red envelope was opened to reveal who named the cocktail and what it would be named.
Finally, the audience had to open the vault. The vault was set to the first letters of the last names of the people who initially pulled the alphabet cards. Everyone’s vaults clicked open, and the drink we had constructed as a team was sitting inside. I don’t know how most of the magic displayed in Cocktail Magique works, and I don’t want to. Magic, one of the oldest performing arts (along with burlesque), is something I would rather be in awe of than understand.
Deneka Peniston for Cocktail Magique by Company XIV
At the last show, the performers were crying. The audience was crying. Nobody wanted to leave, and everyone knew we had to. In the outside world, the Seahawks were winning the Super Bowl and the city was shivering. But inside the Cocktail Magique theatre, we were all basking in the last dregs of a wonderful show, soon to be converted back to a dream.
It may have looked, from the outside, like any other bar, but like any space that is a home to the performing arts, something magical happened at 17 Wyckoff Avenue. For three years and over five hundred seventy performances, the space was filled with wonder, sex, and a lot of drunkenness. At the end of the final performance, Gayle reminded us: “Every ending is also a beginning.” Undoubtedly, Company XIV will do something glittery and impossible again, but it won’t be the same, it never is.
Writer: Pallas M. Gutierrez
Editor-in-Chief: Karlye Whitt
