Neal Rubin: Presto — a magical evening in Troy comes with illusions, laughs and cookies

The first thing Ferran Poage did at our dinner table was pull a full-sized Sharpie out of a flat pouch not much bigger than a postage stamp.

The very same Sharpie, or at least a deceptively reasonable facsimile, then vanished, returned, and appeared to bend and flop between his fingers like a raw Ballpark frank.

Most of us never see close-up magic close up. At the Magic Soiree in Troy, you get tableside bedazzling and more, with "more" including a comedy magic show and homemade chocolate chip cookies.

I'm in favor of all of those things, which apparently makes me ordinary. Sarah Harfield, the baker and also the Soiree's host and co-producer, says that "American audiences, in particular, love to be fooled."

As for Michigan audiences, we're continuing a long and distinguished magic tradition that includes the presence of the world's largest maker and supplier of tricks in Colon and the departure of Harry Houdini, who died in room 401 of the former Grace Hospital in Detroit on Oct. 31, 1926.

For that, or at least for the Soiree, we can thank a pair of British expats who began performing together because they couldn't work with orangutans.

Lady Sarah, as she's billed, and husband Keith Fields present their $67.50, buffet-dinner evening of sleight-of-hand every Saturday and most Fridays through Nov. 18, with a special holiday show Dec. 21.

The location is Camp Ticonderoga, which is not a hunting lodge but rather a restaurant on Rochester Road attached to a golf course. The rustic decor fits the name, and there's a goofiness under the circumstances that fits the tone.

Fields, 65, has performed on four continents and on cruise ships wherever there's water. But this is the first time he's made a birdcage disappear while he's standing beneath an enormous stuffed moose head.

Again, I'm in favor. In an ugly time for the planet, mirth and magic are particularly nice to have around. Cookies are a bonus.

Fitting in and joining up

Harfield and Fields moved here from London in 2009 because his brother was a pastor in Oakland County and what the heck, why not.

The transition has been mostly smooth, and the bumpy parts at least produced good stories. The middle of their three children, for instance, once used the British term when he called across a Troy Athens High School classroom to request an eraser: "Have you got a rubber I can use for five minutes?"

No one was deported, and Harfield and Fields are now U.S. citizens. They raised a leader dog, they drive a Jeep and a Chrysler minivan, they're in charge of the annual subdivision picnic, and they've used 31 years of marriage to hone their timing.

"Sometimes," Fields begins, "we finish each other's −"

Harfield interrupts: "Sandwiches."

More from Neal Rubin: He went eye-to-eye with Michigan's only wolverine

They're both creative by nature. She's been an amateur actress and writes children's books. He does corporate events, and builds and sells large magic illusions: think sawing someone in half, but fresher. Magicians in a handful of countries have told him they learned the trade from translations of his how-to book, "Magic Tricks."

When the youngest of their three children left for college, he says, mindful that their lives together had been governed by his career, he asked what she wanted to do.

"Let's go to Borneo," she said, "and work with orangutans."

It turned out, alas, that volunteers there don't get to do anything more riveting than build enclosures. Helping poor people in Calcutta had roadblocks, too.

OK, she said. "I want to perform with you."

The power of magic

She joined Toastmasters and took an improv class, and he wrote a children's show for the two of them.

Darned if it didn't work, and that led to the Magic Soiree, where she's in sequins and he's the bumbler in a bowler hat who threatens to play his ukulele.

It's funny enough that Joe Sclafani, of Sterling Heights. has seen the show five times since it opened in earnest in January 2022, with his brother and his kids and then a date, Cathy Kroll of Rochester.

Sharing a table, we laughed together and we each ate an extra cookie, and one of the tableside magicians, Dennis Leung, let him keep a fork he'd bent into improbable configurations with just the slightest pressure from his fingertips.

"I'm still a little kid," said Sclafani, 59, "with or without magic."

But magic helps take years off. Besides, Fields says, "it's a perfect date night, because when close-up magicians are at your table, you don't have to talk to each other."

That earns him the British equivalent of a "Shush!" from Harfield.

Truth is, they say, they feel a responsibility to magic, and to the state where Abbott's Magic Shop brings thousands of people every August to an annual festival of astonishment in Colon.

They like keeping talented young performers like Poage and Leung engaged and employed. They'd like to turn the show into something year-round, and maybe put together a Houdini commemoration in three years for the 100th anniversary of his demise.

They love the gasps and the laughs. And bless her, Harfield likes to bake.

Reach Neal Rubin at NARubin@freepress.com, or via TwiX at @nealrubin_fp.

To subscribe to the Free Press at discount rates, click here.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Magic Soiree in Troy features comedy, illusions, cookies