Recently, I saw back-to-back magic shows, willingly: Joshua Jay’s darling “Six Impossible Things” and Vitaly Beckman’s gawkier “Vitaly: An Evening of Wonders.” Cutlery was mangled, socks were matched, psychic Pictionary was attempted and achieved. Just once, I chose a card.

Even in a moment when “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” is a hot seller, it is vaguely shaming to like magic. I should have grown out of it by now. Like sour gummies or glitter nail polish. Magic feels so unevolved, so old-school. Its practitioners are mostly male and mostly white. Some of them try to be sexy, which is a disaster, or mysterious, which isn’t any better. But here’s the thing: Life has a lot of surprises, many are unpleasant. If you can guarantee an evening in which all the shocks are happy ones and somehow cup-and-ball related, I’m in.

I found Mr. Jay’s show down a narrow flight of stairs at the tip of Canal Street. Twenty guests had assembled in a red-lit room that looked like the foyer of a hipster bordello. On a recent Friday, the mood was tremulous, the air scented with cinnamon and enigma. At show time, bedsheets the gray of a laundry accident were distributed and more or less willingly slipped on, ghost-style. (In this national moment, is dressing up in sheets a good look?) After only a little more inanity, Mr. Jay himself appeared.

Mr. Jay has a reputation as a scholar, an inventor and a champion of the kid magician set. Some unfortunate promotional photographs had suggested he might go the sexy route, but thankfully he arrived sporting a Henley shirt and a slightly goofy grin, looking like a fraternity pledge who’d just dashed in from crew practice. Following a wicked trust-building exercise, he sent the audience merrily marching through a series of small basement rooms, counting off the illusions, a few of them loosely inspired by “Alice in Wonderland.” We’re all mad here.