A Place Where Cocktails Can Be Magique

The owner of a Long Island marketing company turned away from his new fiancé and gestured toward me during one of the variety of intermissions occuring in a recent performance of “Cocktail Magique” and proclaimed: “If only I had seen this place before I did my basement.” 

The latest transformation of the Wyckoff Avenue bar might surprise armchair historians of storefronts past who recall the home of the bucolic, Canadian-themed poutine spot UpNorth or the Gradient, the similarly pastel-colored but “Female-Owned” brunch spot that would replace it before closing doors in the early pandemic. Of these, Austin McCormick’s Company XIV might be the location’s first renter to think of bathing the entrance in clouds of incense or attaching pseudo-taxidermied heads of giraffes or zebras on the wall. McCormick, a choreographer who graduated from Julliard a decade or two ago and whose dance company opened its first location on Troutman Street in 2016, has become something of a local specialist in satisfying a grab bag of neo-”baroque” sensibilities; “Cocktail Magique” is perhaps his most overtly mainstream production yet, a mirage of Las Vegas appearing suddenly in Bushwick.