Pearl City’s Mr. O Takes Magic Over Koolaus In New Show

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Harvey ‘Mr. O’ Ouchi displays his balloon-making skills. Photo from Harvey Ouchi.

Pearl City native Harvey Ouchi works for the state Department Of Education by day, but when night falls he’s “Mr. O,“a magician with a whole lot of fun tricks up his sleeve.

Ouchi and colleague (and dentist) David Brown opened Koolau Magic Theatre at Koolau Center April 24 to a sold-out crowd.

“It’s what we were optimistically hoping for; that was a good problem,” Ouchi said of the size of the opening-night crowd. “We thought it went great. Everyone I talked to said they just had so much fun at the event. That was our goal.”

Koolau Magic Theatre’s next show is this Friday, and tickets are already selling fast. They cost $12 for adults and $8 for children at the door, or $10 and $6 up to two hours before the show at Brown’s dental clinic at Koolau Center, near the magic venue. For more information, call 239-6711.

Ouchi describes the show as family-oriented and one in which they like to involve the audience. For his own acts, Ouchi performs tricks with cards, rope and a floating dollar bill along with an escape routine. He said The Great Davidio (Brown) is famous for his chicken act, among other things.

“A chicken comes to life and does a whole dancing routine by itself; kids love that. We both have quite a bit of humor in there. He has a couple of routines that are really funny,” said Ouchi, who graduated from Waipahu High School.

Their show offers six acts, with each magician performing three of them. In between acts they perform parlor tricks or close-up magic to keep up the show’s momentum.

The two magicians used to do shows together for Monty’s Magic Theatre in 2000-2001. Ouchi said Brown wanted to work together again and was able to make it happen by securing a classroom at Foulger’s School of Real Estate, a neighboring Koolau Center tenant. The owner of Foulger’s agreed to let the magicians use the room at times when he wasn’t conducting classes.

“We really enjoyed working together as part of Monty’s Magic Theater,” Ouchi recalled.“We wanted to do it again, and (Brown) saw some potential in his area. He had been kind of eyeing it over for a couple of years and just asked.

“We were lucky this first time around because he didn’t have classes last week,” Ouchi added, saying it gave them more time to set up for opening night.

For the past 34 years, Ouchi has worked for the DOE and currently is in the special education section. He’s performed magic for more than 15 years and can be seen on rotating Sunday mornings at Pearl City IHOP, as well as occasionally substituting for magician Glen Bailey at Tony Roma’s in Pearl City on Tuesday nights.

“It actually started out as a hobby in ‘93 and became more serious just before the year 2000. I thoroughly enjoy it.”

Koolau Center is located at 47-388 Hui Iwa St. in Kaneohe across from Valley of the Temples.For details on Koolau Magic Theatre, visit Ouchi’s website at http://www.familymagichawaii.com.