By Donna Barr

On stage a normally dressed guy, sabotaged by a small girl assistant, almost accidentally pulls off an amazing trick while keeping up a running line of hilarious patter and fielding audience heckling; these are among the special delights of Vaudeville comedy.

Magician Louie Foxx brought back that classic style of humor to add sparkle to his highly entertaining show at the Clallam Bay Library, Monday, June 24.

With him was his assistant, his young daughter Miss Ella, who never gave the man an even break.

When she wasn’t causing chaos with slide-whistles and air horns, Ella was outdoing Dad in giving prizes to the children in the audience who had been recruited for each trick. The youngsters managed to support their impromptu parts in the act, even though they were giggling non-stop as Foxx made objects appear and disappear.

To Foxx, nothing is an inanimate object, with everything from foam-rubber carrots to a can of snakes doing as they please.

Miss Ella and Foxx turned a line of children into a plate-spinning routine, with each girl or boy carefully balancing a plate on a stick. Foxx spun each plate and transferred it to Miss Ella, who made sure the volunteer children carefully kept their plate spinning. In the end, six plates spun simultaneously on a small grove of sticks.

Foxx’s routine is 100 percent his own, reflecting his background in stand-up comedy. Unlike many professional magicians, he writes and copyrights his own scripts and jokes.

Foxx’s performance kept people of all ages riveted and laughing.

Foxx recently received an award from the International Brotherhood of Magicians, even though they had to make up its title: “The World’s Most Annoying Magic Trick.”

Foxx joked, “I got the award in the mail along with a Cease and Desist order.”

He said the thing he likes the best about the trick is that it allows him to use an air-horn in a library.

The program was supported by the Friends of the Clallam Bay Library. Foxx also appeared at libraries within the North Olympic Library System, including Port Angeles, Sequim and Forks.

Parents might want to keep an eye on the front yard, just in case there are a bunch of children out there, spinning the household plates on sticks.