Cotuit Center for the Arts Niel Mcgarry Dec 20
2 shows on Cape stages this weekend are aimed squarely at the holiday audience, while another is a feel-proficient musical and virtual result tackles a thought-provoking topic.
Both holiday stories are classics: Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" told in a tour de force one-man performance; and a family consequence with many children on stage for Barbara Robinson'southward "The Best Christmas Pageant E'er."
Nosotros've got a review of those as well as the Dublin-set up "Once" musical romance in Orleans. The weekend'southward final show is virtual and serious: plays by local writers to spark a discussion of racial reckoning.
In the Mid-Cape, Cotuit Centre for the Arts is producing "Elf, the Musical" but tickets are sold out for the in-person run. Wait until December. 17 and 19 for alive-streaming options.
What's new
Three short plays on racial reckoning
Wellfleet Preservation Hall volition host a costless virtual production of 3 short plays by Wellfleet playwrights Candace Perry and John Dennis Anderson at 7 p.m. Tuesday. Growing up white in the South, both playwrights have stories to tell about racial injustice, white supremacy and the challenges of racial reckoning. A live discussion will follow the presentation of the three plays, and viewers will be invited to participate. The give-and-take'south respondent and moderator will be Charles Everett Pace, a scholar and historical interpreter who has portrayed such historical figures as Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes and Malcolm X. Data: https://wellfleetpreservationhall.org
Reviews
Review: "Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol: A Solo Performance by Neil McGarry"
Adapted from: Dickens' novel, directed by Ross MacDonald, and hosted by the Cape Cod Theatre Company/Harwich Junior Theatre
What it's about: Professional role player McGarry comes home to Cape Cod with his one-man retelling of the love Christmas story nigh the redemption of miser Ebenezer Scrooge after he is visited past iv ghosts and shown the error of his ways.
See it or non? McGarry commands the stage in an extraordinary feat of acting, memorization and nervus for a more 2-60 minutes, two-act product that brings warmth and sense of humor — yes, humor — to the tale of a miserable human being learning lessons of caring for your fellow man and keeping Christmas in your heart. McGarry'south performance is on a largely bare stage, inventively and effectively using just a trunk, a chair and a few props – including a long white sash and sonorous bells – to create the classic scenes and develop a rapport with the audience.
Highlight of the show: McGarry is on his ain for this tour de strength, only yous might swear there are other people on stage equally he convincingly creates conversations, hugs and fifty-fifty dancing between multiple characters. His exuberant commitment of Fezziwig'southward party when Scrooge was a fellow volition make you smile.
Fun fact: McGarry is a Barnstable Loftier graduate who was founding artistic director for South Shore-based Bay Colony Shakespeare Company before moving to Europe with his family several years ago. The West Harwich stop is part of a short render New England tour of his unique testify.
Worth noting: A familiarity with the details of Scrooge'south story would be an nugget for patrons as McGarry's rapid-fire monologue both as narrator and every character sweeps through the story's events. This prove was created using Dickens' words and while there are highlights from so many adaptations — "If they would rather die, they had better practise it, and decrease the surplus population"; "Every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a pale of holly through his centre"; "In that location's more of gravy than of grave about you" etc. — McGarry'south version also includes infrequently used passages you may have long forgotten from the novel.
1 more thing: Having just one man on stage for this story makes you realize how much of most Scrooge characterizations is watching and reacting to the events the ghosts of other Christmases makes him watch. While Scrooge is given ample stage time hither in the early scenes and finale, much of the rest focuses on a colorful round of other characters and a kaleidoscope of events more than many adaptations.
If you get: seven p.m. Dec. eleven and 12 at Greatcoat Cod Theatre Visitor/Harwich Inferior Theatre, 105 Partition St., West Harwich; tickets: $25; $20 for seniors; $15 for under age 21. Reservations: 508-432-2002 or world wide web.capecodtheatrecompany.org. Express capacity with socially distant seating. Masking is required.
Review: "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever"
Written by: Barbara Robinson, presented by Falmouth Theatre Lodge
What it's about: A typical yearly church building Christmas pageant is turned upside down when the boondocks's problem children — the Herdmans — strength themselves into master roles in the play. They scare the other kids abroad from their ain roles, and residents fear the terminal result will exist the worst production ever.
See it or not? See it. The show — an 60 minutes long with no intermission — features a great cast of child actors and gets us in the mood for the vacation season. It also helps usa all realize non everything is as it seems and that there's a kid notwithstanding in every one of us!
Highlight of the evidence: At that place are several not bad young actors in this play, with Ash Bossi as Imogene Herdman and Caroline Sullivan as Gladys Herdman standing out for their endearing and humorous performances.
Fun fact: The cast is a family unit affair, with performances past mother and girl team Genoa and Eowyn Langnickel; mother and daughter Judy and Caroline Sullivan; brother and sister PJ and Dawn Berube; mother and girl Katie and Sylvie Parsons; and father, son and daughter Toby, Cora and Bobby Goers
Worth noting: With the visitor'southward last product of "The All-time Christmas Pageant Always" in 2017, theater officials felt 2021 was a perfect time to bring information technology back as a prove about "faith, hope, and belief in improve times ahead."
1 more thing: Director Sonia Schonning says information technology's been amazing to see the immature actors, ages 5-xv — many doing their commencement live theater production — gel from the start solar day. Schonning says they supported each other throughout the rehearsals, a bail that comes through in the bear witness.
If yous become: 7:xxx p.m. Fridays and 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through Dec. 12 at Highfield Theatre, 58 Highfield Drive, Falmouth. Tickets: $18, $15 for seniors, $13 for under age 18; www.FalmouthTheatreGuild.org.
Jay Pateakos
Review: "One time"
Written by: Book by Enda Walsh, music and lyrics past Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, based on the 2007 moving picture written and directed by John Carney; presented by The Academy of Performing Arts
What information technology's about: The evidence opens on a street in modern-day Dublin, where a immature musician (John Connelly) is singing for his supper. It'due south a scene familiar to all urban center dwellers: The starving musician stands behind his empty guitar case hoping his music and voice will earn him enough coins for dinner and a Guinness or two at the local pub. And so along comes a young woman (Shannon Davis) who proposes to reward him with a dissimilar kind of currency: some music of her own making. She takes him to the neighborhood pub, where Billy the proprietor (Andrew Grignon) lets her utilise a pianoforte to play lilting Irish tunes, along with a little Mendelssohn.
It's not hard to predict what happens in this male child-meets-girl-and-music story: They fall in love. The two leads are skilled musicians and vocalists, but more than than that, they create a romantic chemistry that rings unusually true. This is a modernistic honey story, though, with complications like exes and different cultures, and so don't await a fairy-tale ending.
See it or not? Become for the music and let yourself be carried away. There is a soothing feel to this piece that is a relief from the stress-filled reality surrounding u.s.a.. From the sweet love story, to the flowing Irish tunes, to the low-cal hues of the ready, it is a gentle ride into Irish civilisation.
Highlight of the bear witness: This show is literally filled with music. It begins with the pre-evidence warm-up, during which a troupe of singers and dancers performs sweet Irish tunes plus "Silent Night" and "O Holy Nighttime" every bit a nod to the season. Then they engage the audience in a human foot-stomping, hand-clapping number that embodies all the unfettered joy frequently associated with the Irish culture. Thank you to a large company of musicians in the background, the music continues as a backdrop to the love story. Some numbers are filled with the plaintive strains of violins, others filled with fun and dance. And some numbers have a dreamy tone that brings to mind vintage stone from groups like The Moody Blues.
Fun fact: The show was originally developed here in Massachusetts, at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, in Apr 2011. Then it was performed Off-Broadway at the New York Theater Workshop in December of that twelvemonth, earlier transferring to Broadway in 2012. The product received 11 Tony Honor nominations, winning 8, including Best Musical and Best Book.
Worth noting: Throughout, dance numbers add a sense of vitality to the Orleans production, only one number stands out. 3 young performers from the Kanaley Schoolhouse of Irish Dance in Hyannis — Violet Roche, Priscilla Labranche and Colleen Mahoney on opening nighttime — were particularly sparkling every bit they performed a jig in vivid-colored, sequined costumes.
One more thing: Some scenes are informal skits perfectly suited to the intimate, arena-style theater at the University Playhouse. Director John F. Kennedy deftly weaves these scenes into the whole fabric of the production, creating the perfect blend of music and drama (with the occasional pun thrown in for comic relief).
If y'all go: 7 p.thousand. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.one thousand. Sundays through Dec. 19 at the Academy Playhouse, 120 Main St., Orleans; $30 adults, $20 under age 15; 508-202-1952, world wide web.academyplayhouse.org. Proof of COVID-19 vaccination or a negative COVID examination within the previous 72 hours is required for entrance to the theater.
Sue Mellen
This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: On stage at Cape Cod theaters: Holiday, musical love stories
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Source: https://sports.yahoo.com/cape-cod-theaters-present-holiday-100904103.html
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