Forget simply cutting a ribbon. To officially open House of Spells, the UK’s wildly popular immersive fandom destination made its New York debut with something far more fitting—a little magic.

Video by Magda Katz

More than 100 leaders from Broadway, tourism, hospitality and government gathered Wednesday morning as House of Spells officially opened the doors to its first U.S. flagship at 234 West 42nd Street, but the real showstopper belonged to British illusionist and AMAZE star Jamie Allan.

Rather than pulling a rabbit out of a hat, Allan invited audience members to call out random numbers. The choices appeared completely unrelated—until the finale. Before our eyes, those seemingly random numbers transformed into the exact date and time the spell would be broken, officially bringing House of Spells to life. The room erupted.

It was the perfect opening for a place where imagination isn’t confined to the movies—it’s something you can actually walk into.

Created by visionary founders Khaja Hussain and Rafeeque Olikkathodi, House of Spells began in the United Kingdom in 2016 and has become a destination for fantasy lovers, gamers, anime enthusiasts and movie buffs. Its first American home couldn’t have picked a better address than Times Square, where fantasy and reality have always shared the same stage.

Walking through the 20,000-square-foot space feels like stepping through a portal. Around every corner another universe waits to be explored.

Marvel fans will find Spider-Man, Deadpool and Captain America. Jedi can browse Star Wars collectibles, while Hogwarts hopefuls can choose from magical wands worthy of Harry Potter himself. Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Fantastic Beasts, Vikings, Stranger Things, DC Comics, The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, KPop Demon Hunters, Anime and dozens of other fandoms all coexist under one enchanted roof.

Whether it’s a Baby Yoda backpack, a rare Lord of the Rings tankard, Batman’s miniature Batmobile or collectibles that are difficult to find anywhere else, House of Spells is designed less like a traditional store and more like a treasure hunt.

“As they say in Game of Thrones, ‘Winter is Coming’…to Times Square as we bring the fandom universe to what always feels like the center of the universe,” said Jaime Vidal, President of USA Operations at House of Spells. “Coming to the country’s most iconic entertainment capital is the perfect U.S. launching pad for us, and we can’t wait for visitors to explore the wonders, magic, mystique and enchantment of House of Spells Times Square.”

“The ultimate fandom destination is no longer across the pond in a galaxy far, far away—it is right here in Times Square, the beating heart of Midtown Manhattan,” said Tom Harris, President of the Times Square Alliance. “In a neighborhood where magic happens every day, we welcome House of Spells and its mystical charm to the Crossroads of the World.”

Julie Coker, President and CEO of NYC Tourism + Conventions, welcomed the attraction by noting that while visitors from the United Kingdom already top New York City’s international tourism market, House of Spells is arriving with plans to stay, giving even more travelers a reason to make Times Square part of their itinerary.

Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal praised the opening as another milestone for the neighborhood, noting that more than 50 million visitors pass through Times Square annually and calling House of Spells’ decision to locate its first U.S. flagship there another testament to Manhattan’s place as one of the world’s premier destinations for retail and entertainment.

Council Member Carl Wilson celebrated the attraction as a place where fans of every generation can immerse themselves in the worlds they love.

For Allan, whose AMAZE recently celebrated its 500th performance, the new attraction captures the same sense of wonder that theater has always inspired.

“House of Spells is such a magical place and exactly the kind of thing I would have wanted to see growing up,” Allan said. “It brings together communities, geeks—in the nicest possible way—and all of us that believe in the impossible. Like a theater, the architecture and design of the shop really transport you.”

And that’s exactly what House of Spells does. It doesn’t ask whether you’re a wizard, a superhero, a Viking, a Jedi or simply someone who still believes imagination should have a place in everyday life.

It simply opens the door and says, welcome to the fandom.

Iceboy!  – The Musical now receiving its world premiere at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, is based on one truly wacky premise.

The show is narrated by the spirit of famed playwright Eugene O’Neil (Nick Offerman, of Parks and Recreation and The Last of Us). O’Neil promises to tell us how he was inspired to write one of the longest, darkest plays in American Theater, The Iceman Cometh. The short answer, stretched over two hours, is that a wealthy actress, Vera Vimm (Megan Mullally, beloved as Karen in Will and Grace) buys a caveman frozen in a block of ice at an auction, and takes him home to thaw. Comedy ensues. This results in a show that is always fun, but very emotionally light weight.

Megan Mullally and Grey Henson Photo by Todd Rosenberg

The book of this musical was based on a play by writers Erin Quinn Purcell and Jay Reiss. But why make it a musical? With a straight play, you can laugh at characters and not have to care about them. Music demands emotional engagement with the journeys of the characters. It’s fun sometimes just to see wonderful comedic performers strut their stuff. But there’s not enough genuine emotional meat on the bones of this show for me.

Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman. Photo by Todd Rosenberg

Mr. Offerman and Ms. Mullally are a power couple in real life, who bring the best of their talents to the Goodman stage. Mr. Offerman’s understated, dry delivery draws non-stop laughs from the audience. Ms. Mullally happily flaunts the unabashed sexiness that made her famous, showing that some things just get better with time.

Donterrio, Linda Mugleston, Shawn Pfautsch, Grey Henson, Megan Mullally, Melanie Brezill, Will Koski and Andrea San Miguel. Photo by Todd Rosenberg

They are supported by an unbeatable cast of musical theater clowns. As the Iceboy, Grey Henson brings an irresistible, goofy charm to his evolution from inarticulate caveman to unlikely Broadway star. Sarah Stiles, who wowed us in Tootsie, is a deadpan delight as Vera’s long suffering, menopausal assistant, Lambert. Vera’s butler, played by Alex Goodrich, trapped in costume as Frankenstein’s monster for most of the show, grunts with great expression. Cedric Yarbrough Is warm and engaging as Floyd Richards, the playwright who created Vera’s star vehicles.

Melanie Brezill, Shawn Pfautsch, Donterrio, Megan Mullally, Grey Henson, Andrea San Miguel, Will Koski and Linda Mugleston. Photo by Todd Rosenberg

The events in this story start out weird and become increasingly absurd. Middle aged Vera is badly miscast in her current stage vehicle, playing a seventeen year old ingenue. Iceboy learns to talk so well that he can even mimic Vera. So, when Vera has an accident that takes her out of the show, Iceboy gets to go on for her in drag, and be a Broadway star for a while. When Vera recovers, she tries to reclaim her spotlight. Iceboy is put on display in a zoo. However he still manages to have a romantic fling behind bars with Lambert, and brings out her primitive side. Amazingly, all this finally does manage to involve Eugene O’Neill. It’s all great silliness. But, I’m afraid, it’s nothing to sing about.

Melanie Brezill, Shawn Pfautsch, Megan Mullally, Sarah Styles and Grey Henson Photo by Todd Rosenberg

The best musicals are character driven. Sitcoms don’t make great musicals because the characters don’t evolve, or drive the story. The situation simply changes around them. So when it came to the songs by Mark Hollman (Urinetown), with lyrics by Hollman and Reiss, I found myself unmoved.

Linda Mugleston, Megan Mullally, Melanie Brezill,
Andrea San Miguel and Nick Offerman. Photo by Todd Rosenberg

It’s okay for Vera to be surrounded by an entourage of cartoon characters. But it’s hard to engage with her emotionally if she is a cartoon herself. Ms. Mullally is funny, sexy and as touching as possible under the circumstances. But the character is never really empathetic. Her true focus is all on her own career. In the end, there’s nothing about this character to admire or like enough to care about what happens to her.

Melanie Brezill, Andrea San Miguel, Shawn Pfautsch,
Nick Offerman, Megan Mullally, Will Koski, Linda Mugleston and Donterrio. Photo by Todd Rosenberg

Director Marc Bruni, who made us care so much about Carole King in Beautiful,  does his best to help the team shape the story to add emotional interest. Vera tells us she was an orphan. She has a need to be a mother to the lonely Iceboy. However, her concern for the Iceboy is more about assuaging her own loneliness than fulfilling his needs. Floyd the playwright wants to marry Vera (don’t ask me why), but she keeps him at arm’s length. Unfortunately, I didn’t care enough about their relationship to root for it to succeed.

So, if you don’t care that you really don’t care, this show is a lot of fun. There are random gags for theater folk, like comparing the hairy and bulky Iceboy to your typical stagehand. There are funny meta moments, like when Vera’s hospital bed is brought onstage in the middle of her house set, and the doctor jokes about having to go back to the hospital to get her medicine. The performances are all brilliant. But like so much of what I see in Broadway musicals these days, this show leans heavily on style over substance.  Hopefully, Iceboy! is not yet frozen.

Iceboy! – The Musical plays through August 9 at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre.

There is a particular kind of Manhattan Saturday — humid, moody, faintly chaotic — that seems engineered for revelation. On July 11th, it arrived right on schedule… and so did the witches.

WitchsFest 2026

WitchsFest USA celebrated its fifteenth year at Astor Place, that scrappy little crossroads between Broadway and Lafayette that has hosted skateboarders, cube-huggers and now, once a year, an entire pagan nation. Free, sprawling, and unapologetically itself, the fair is billed as “Ye Olde Pagan Faire,” though nothing about it felt olde so much as perennial — the kind of gathering that has clearly been perfecting itself since 2005, waiting for the rest of us to catch up.

Dark Moon Spirit

And catch up we should. Herewith, a gentle nudge to every overscheduled, overmedicated, Peloton-adjacent woman currently vacationing two hours east of here: there is another way to mark time. It does not require a wellness app. It requires a Wheel.

Miss Luah gets serious about spiritual well being

The Wheel, Explained (Briefly, Deliciously)

Northern New Jersey Tarot delivering the good news

Witchcraft, at its foundation, is an earth religion — which is to say, it keeps a calendar the sun and soil actually agree with. Solstices, equinoxes, and the four cross-quarter days between them mark a rhythm that predates every productivity hack ever pitched to a woman in activewear. You don’t have to call yourself a Witch to notice that your nervous system prefers a solstice to a status update. WitchsFest simply asks you to notice on purpose.

Lysander comes prepared

A Faire Worth the Trek

The immersive experience at Sha-Manic Healing

The vendor rows read like a DMT vision. At Silent Wyld, you could adopt a cute, fuzzy ghost — no home visit required. The College of Thelema offered esoteric study for the more academically inclined hex-curious.

Kissy Vauquez of Kizz Hugz

Kizz Hugz brought astrologically tailored skincare, because even your moon sign deserves a serum.

Bound by spirit: Links & Leather

Magick & Macabre sold candles built for binding lovers, while Links & Leather offered a rather more three-dimensional solution. HouseCrypt’s ceramics were spooky in the most charming, shelf-worthy way while at one especially vivid booth a sound bath was underway. The querent stood serenely inside a brass bowl while the practitioner held space over her like a blessing made audible.

Dorin Matthews raising vibes

That booth belonged to Dorin Matthews, shaman, energy worker and captain of the Holistic Mobile Bus, who managed to be even more compelling in person than any of her considerable titles suggest.

A soothing moment in The Temple Of Hecate

For the moodier among us, the Temple of Hecate offered a darker corner lit only by electric candles — a small mercy, historically speaking, for anyone descended from a widow with land and bad luck. But we digress. It’s a party, not a pyre.

Ballet Tonantzin and Aztec magic

All Hail RavenHawk

WitchsFest founders Rev. Starr RavenHawk and Rev. Luna Rojas

None of this exists without Rev. Starr RavenHawk, co-founder and Elder of the NYC Wiccan Family Temple, who has been shepherding New York’s Pagan community since 1993 and practicing as an Eclectic Solitary Witch since 1978 — nearly five decades of devotion that shows in every carefully chosen candle and every workshop timetable. A Trini-Canadian who came to the magickal arts young and never left, RavenHawk founded the Temple itself in 2003 and co-founded the WFT Academy of Pagan Studies in 2007 — the first Witch school New York City has ever had the good sense to host. She is, by any fair accounting, one of the architects of contemporary American Paganism’s public face, and WitchsFest is her long-running love letter to the city that let her build it.

CeCe and Emma came for the vibes

Her own booth, naturally, needed no embellishment: ghost pepper sauce flanked by horseshoes and small wax effigies of persons unnamed flying off the table with the brisk confidence of a woman who has done considerable abundance work.

WitchsFest 2026

The Actual Point

Lady Rhea: better living through Sicilian candle magick

Strip away the puns — reluctantly, and only for a sentence — and what WitchsFest offers is disarmingly simple: permission to trust your own intuition, to mark the turning of a season instead of a quarter, and to seek something larger than your inbox without having to join anything or believe anything you don’t already suspect is true.

Salem’s representative Rev. Alexander Cabot

“We are a nature-based ideology rooted in the spiritual aspects of oneself, taming the ego, surpassing the material and nourishing the spirit.” witnessed Rev. Alexander Cabot, who holds rank as Elder in both Salem and NYC. “This is a wonderful turnout, it’s always been like homecoming at this festival.” Homecoming, indeed. Call it Source Energy, call it the Goddess, call it whatever gets you out of the rat race and back into your body. The Wheel keeps turning either way.

WitchsFest 2026

Fifteen years in, WitchsFest USA has become exactly what its founders hoped: a family-friendly, joyfully weird civic institution hiding in plain sight at Astor Place. Next Solstice, skip the spin class. On July 10, 2027 there’s a drum circle with your name on it.

The N’Kenge Foundation’s Viva Italia Masquerade Gala brings together acclaimed performers, distinguished honorees, emerging talent, and global ambassador H.H. Dr. Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe for an evening dedicated to arts education, empowerment, and opportunity.

The N’Kenge Foundation has announced an ambitious and high-profile lineup for its upcoming Viva Italia Masquerade Gala, an event designed to celebrate artistic excellence while supporting the next generation of performers. Set for June 12, 2026, in New York City, the gathering promises a unique combination of celebrity appearances, live performances, student showcases, competition, philanthropy, and cultural celebration.

At the center of the evening stands acclaimed artist N’Kenge, whose foundation has become increasingly recognized for its commitment to educating, inspiring, uplifting, and amplifying young artists. The organization’s mission is reflected throughout the gala program, which combines entertainment with meaningful opportunities for emerging talent.

Serving as host alongside N’Kenge is H.H. Dr. Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe, the television host and global ambassador whose international profile brings an additional layer of prestige to the event. His participation underscores the gala’s global outlook and its emphasis on connecting artists, educators, patrons, and cultural leaders through a shared commitment to creativity and advancement.

The Viva Italia Masquerade Gala has been designed as more than a traditional fundraising event. Organizers have positioned it as a celebration of artistic achievement and a showcase for future stars. The evening’s theme combines elegance and performance, creating an atmosphere where established professionals and rising talents can share the same stage.

One of the most anticipated elements of the program is the Showstopper Competition, a national talent showcase intended to spotlight exceptional performers. The competition reflects the foundation’s commitment to providing visibility and career-building opportunities to artists at pivotal moments in their development.

Among the featured performers and personalities is Michael James Scott, widely celebrated for his acclaimed portrayal of the Genie in Disney’s Aladdin. His presence adds significant Broadway star power to the event and reinforces the gala’s strong connection to the world of musical theater.

Joining the lineup is Hisham Tawfiq, known to audiences for his work on NBC’s The Blacklist. His participation broadens the evening’s appeal and highlights the event’s ability to attract respected figures from television and entertainment.

The gala will also recognize several notable honorees whose professional accomplishments have made an impact in their respective fields. Rain Pryor, recognized for her work on ABC’s Head of the Class and her broader contributions to the arts, is among those being celebrated during the evening.

Also receiving recognition is Antoinette Quarshie, Dean of Riverdale Country School. Her inclusion reflects the foundation’s belief that education and artistic development are closely connected, and that leadership within academic institutions plays an essential role in nurturing future generations of creative talent.

The event’s guest list further strengthens the evening’s reputation as a gathering of accomplished professionals. Peter Avery of New York City Public Schools brings an educational perspective to the celebration, reflecting the gala’s commitment to mentorship and youth development.

Opera will have a strong presence through Grammy Award-nominated singer Kenneithia M. Mitchell, whose career has earned admiration from audiences and industry professionals alike. Her participation highlights the broad range of artistic disciplines represented throughout the event.

The evening will also feature Mia Sanchez, recognized as the 2025 Showstopper winner and an American Idol standout. Her journey from competition success to national recognition embodies the type of artistic pathway that the foundation seeks to encourage and support.

International talent is represented by Yoann FreeJay, winner of The Voice France. His appearance underscores the global dimension of the gala and reinforces the event’s commitment to celebrating excellence across borders and cultures.

Broadway audiences will also recognize Thayne Jasperson from Hamilton. His participation adds another celebrated stage performer to the lineup and contributes to the event’s strong theatrical identity.

Another distinguished guest is Jahzara Martina of The Metropolitan Opera. Her presence reflects the gala’s embrace of both classical and contemporary artistic traditions, creating a program that speaks to a wide range of audiences and disciplines.

Throughout the day, attendees will have opportunities to engage with workshops, educational activities, and performance showcases. The schedule has been crafted to create meaningful interactions between emerging artists and established professionals, allowing participants to gain insight, encouragement, and inspiration from leaders within the industry.

The evening portion of the celebration transitions into the highly anticipated masquerade gala, where elegance and artistry converge. Organizers envision an atmosphere that honors achievement while creating memorable experiences for supporters, sponsors, performers, and guests.

A silent and live auction will form an important component of the event’s philanthropic efforts. These activities are intended to help generate resources that can further the foundation’s educational initiatives and expand access to opportunities for talented young people pursuing careers in the arts.

The gala’s emphasis on empowerment remains central to every aspect of the program. From student showcases to celebrity appearances, the event has been structured to demonstrate how mentorship, visibility, and community support can help artists achieve their potential.

The N’Kenge Foundation continues to build its reputation as an organization focused on creating lasting impact through education and performance. By bringing together renowned entertainers, educators, ambassadors, and aspiring artists, the foundation is creating a platform where achievement is celebrated and future success is encouraged.

With N’Kenge and H.H. Dr. Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe leading a distinguished lineup that spans Broadway, television, opera, education, and international entertainment, the Viva Italia Masquerade Gala is shaping up to be one of the most anticipated cultural and philanthropic events on the New York calendar. The evening’s blend of artistry, recognition, competition, and community support reflects the foundation’s ongoing mission to empower artists, elevate futures, and change lives through the transformative power of the performing arts.