Magician Richard Landry charms audience at library

 

[July 13, 2022] 

On Thursday, July 7, young readers and their parents enjoyed watching comedy magician Richard Landry perform his tricks at the Lincoln Public Library.

As children anxiously waited for the program to start, Landry told them the library had books about magic tricks. He then joked with the children that they should not check those books out because he did not want them to learn his secrets.

Landry said he would use 10 different magic wands of various sizes and colors. Landry invites assistants for some tricks, but said he would not pick out anyone screaming “Me, me, me” or having a sad look. He looks for children with special smiles on their faces.
 

Landry chose the first helper to come up and aid with a mind-reading crayon trick. The helper was given a box of four crayons. The helper then put the crayon in Landry’s hands, which were behind Landry’s back.

Next, Landry told the child to concentrate on the color of the crayon and then hide it. As Landry held his hand out in front of him, he pretended to read the child’s mind, correctly guessing the crayon was purple.



To begin the show, Landry asked the audience to say, “Read those books” and make their fingers dance. He brought a clapometer and asked the audience to clap as loudly as they could to make the red mark go up to the top.

For his first trick, Landry put a handkerchief with the image of a rabbit on it in his hat. He had the audience make the handkerchief disappear by shouting “Go,” but not “Grow.”

The audience then shouted “Grow" and when Landry pulled the handkerchief out of the hat, it was bigger.

In reading "Beyond the beaten path,” Landry said there may be exotic animals in a story. He brought out a coloring book that had pictures of kangaroos and tigers and other exotic animals in it. Landry asked the children to pretend the pictures were colored in and when he next showed them the pages, they were full of color.

When Landry looked at the pages, they had switched back to having no color. The pages would then have color again when the audience saw them. Finally, even the pictures on the pages disappeared and all the pages were blank. Landry said someone must have made their mind blank.

The mystery of the colored handkerchiefs was Landry’s invention. For this trick, Landry put crayons inside a mat and rolled the mat into a wand. As he pulled the crayons out, they became handkerchiefs.

For Landry’s next trick, he chose a boy and a girl to assist him. He gave the boy a red handkerchief and the girl a blue handkerchief and told them to wad the handkerchiefs into a ball. The children then put the handkerchiefs into a bag, which the boy was asked to hold.

Landry gave the girl a wand to hold, but it “broke” as did the next few wands he gave her.

Landry then had the girl hold the bag and gave the boy five different wands to hold, putting some under the boy’s armpit.
Though the boy waved all five wands at once, the trick still did not work.

Landry then got out rope-less jump ropes and had each child hold one and spin it. The rest of the audience was asked to do the finger dance.



The handkerchiefs Landry pulled out of the hat now had designs on them. The red handkerchief the boy had been given had trapeze artist’s lower body on it. The blue handkerchief the girl had been given had a dancer’s lower body on it. Landry’s yellow handkerchief had a clown’s lower body on it.

Another trick involved three different circus posters with animals on them. Landry showed the audience a Ringling Brother’s Barnum and Bailey Circus poster with a tiger on it. He then turned the poster so the back showed and had them shout so the tigers would disappear. When Landry turned the poster around, it looked like a big library card.

Landry used a special set of three tubes that nested inside one another for his final tricks. Inside the tubes, Landry placed a handkerchief and had everyone yell “Go.”

One final assistant was chosen from the audience. Landry had the assistant wear a magic hat, glasses and a vest. The audience was asked to yell, "Oooh, aaah!" you look awesome.



The assistant was given a big wand to wave as children yelled, “Read those books.” The handkerchief Landry pulled out of the hat was now over five feet long.

As Landry placed the handkerchief back in the hat, he could feel something inside. Landry pulled his rabbit Snowball out of the handkerchief.

After Snowball posed for a few photos, Landry put the rabbit in a “hypnotic trance” to relax him and told everyone to be very quiet. Snowball briefly appeared to be asleep, but quickly came to attention when Landry called his name.

During the pandemic, Landry said he built Snowball a beauty nap chamber. However, when Snowball sees the door of the chamber, he goes crazy and flails his feet.

Once Snowball was safely in the chamber, Landry asked him to peek out at the audience. As the show ended, Landry told the audience to say, “Bye Snowball, we love you.”

Ms. Lydia reminded the children that next Thursday’s program will be mad science.

[Angela Reiners]