holiday shows

Music

Palmer Goes Pops, Lockhart Goes Punk!

Thumbnail image for Palmer Goes Pops, Lockhart Goes Punk! by Bryce Lambert January 2, 2010

The Amanda Palmer/Pops concert made for probably the best New Year’s Eve I’ve ever had. Her set, including such popular selections from her Dresden Dolls and solo material as Missed Me, Runs in the Family, Coin-Operated Boy, and Leeds United, though short, was utterly spectacular. Palmer’s music has a unique quality of retaining a vintageness, [...]

Music

“The Christmas Revels,” Preserving American Music

Thumbnail image for “The Christmas Revels,” Preserving American Music by Bryce Lambert December 22, 2009

The Christmas Revels, now in its 39th annual production at Sanders Theater (through Dec. 27th), may sometimes appear, at its surface, a corny family-friendly holiday show where a bunch sometimes amateurish performers hop around the stage in patched overalls and bonnets singing long-forgotten songs. But, it’s actually engaging in a very necessary act of cultural [...]

Dance

Clara Gets Laid: Vanessa White’s “The Slutcracker”

Thumbnail image for Clara Gets Laid: Vanessa White’s “The Slutcracker” by Bryce Lambert December 18, 2009

Last week, I caught the final dress rehearsal of The Slutcracker (@ the Somerville Theatre through the 20th, but basically sold out). Vanessa White (of the burlesque troupe Babes in Boinkland) turns the classic ballet for people who don’t really like ballet into a sprawling campy burlesque striptease show, where Clara is female yuppie whose [...]

Music

Boston Baroque’s Messiah

Thumbnail image for Boston Baroque’s <em>Messiah</em> by Bryce Lambert December 16, 2009

For me, a good Messiah is not muddled by Victorian applications of pomp and grandiloquence or weighed-down by its “sacred” subject matter. Nor should it be made into a dry academic exercise, in-line with trends in early music performance and recording that sometimes push for too much “authenticity.” It should try to bring something fresh [...]

Theater

Truly Graceful: Underground Railway Theater’s A Christmas Memory

Thumbnail image for Truly Graceful: Underground Railway Theater’s <em>A Christmas Memory</em> by Bryce Lambert December 3, 2009

The Central Square Theater’s holiday double-bill Tru Grace: Holiday Memoirs pairs Grace Paley’s The Loudest Voice with Truman Capote’s Christmastime classic A Christmas Memory and is, because of the strength of Capote’s text and Wesley Savick’s (director and adaptor of both) loyalty to it, probably the best holiday play I’ve yet seen this season. Grace [...]

Theater

Dylan Thomas Adapted: A Child’s Christmas in Wales

Thumbnail image for Dylan Thomas Adapted: A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Bryce Lambert December 1, 2009

Dylan Thomas’ Christmas classic, A Child’s Christmas in Wales, deals with so much of what we like to hear about during the holidays–childhood, family, gifts, carols, food, sweets, and snow–told in the manner in which we like to hear it; with nostalgia, innocence, and a sense of humor and poetics. It’s no surprise that it [...]

Theater

Inverted Christmas Trees: SpeakEasy’s Reckless

Thumbnail image for Inverted Christmas Trees: SpeakEasy’s <em>Reckless</em> by Bryce Lambert November 25, 2009

The SpeakEasy Stage Company’s production of Reckless isn’t your typical Christmas show, but you still get most of the trimmings–they’re just wrapped in a different color paper. Okay, that’s enough of the Christmas puns, maybe. In most Christmas shows or movies, A Christmas Carol and the Nativity being the models for nearly all of them, [...]

Theater

The Holidays at the Huntington: A Civil War Christmas

Thumbnail image for The Holidays at the Huntington: <em>A Civil War Christmas</em> by Bryce Lambert November 21, 2009

Like the Christmas movie, the holiday show exists within its own genre. A Christmas play seeks to satisfy the criteria set by its genre even before it even tries to be a good play, because what’s a Christmas play if it’s not sentimental, accessible, family-oriented, overtly American, and evocative of the values we all tend [...]