To see current editions of such recurring holiday standbys as Messiah, Nutcracker, etc., there is Classical Voice’s lineup of events. Here, we’ve tracked down a few alternatives (or additions), such as 42nd Street Moon’s commissioned world premiere of Scrooge in Love!, a delightful musical sequel to A Christmas Carol.
As I found out at the musical’s premiere last year, Larry Grossman (music), Kellen Blair (lyrics), and Duane Poole (book) came up with a funny and moving story of Scrooge’s pursuit of happiness beyond the happy ending provided by Dickens in Carol. Transplanted temporarily from its regular home in the Eureka Theater, 42nd Street Moon is presenting Scrooge in the Marines’ Memorial Theater, through Dec. 24.
Jason Graae and Melissa Reinertson are cast again in the leading roles of Scrooge and Belle. Dyan McBride is stage director, Dave Dobrusky is music director, and choreography is by Staci Arriaga. The bouncy, uptempo score by Snoopy composer Grossman includes such hummable new songs as “Happier,” “The Hours In Between,” “A Kitchen Built for Twenty,” and “Just One Year.”
The late Michael Smuin’s Christmas Ballet was created in 1995 and is now celebrating its 22nd season, combining classics and pops. One of its highlights is “Santa Baby,” the music made memorable by Eartha Kitt, who upset Eisenhower-era listeners with her suggestive purrs while asking Santa Claus for Cadillacs and diamond rings.
The Christmas Ballet is being offered again, reinvigorated with the addition of four premieres by company dancers, but “ballet” is now missing from the company’s name — it has been renamed from Smuin Ballet to just “Smuin,” in one of those mysterious acts of rebranding. So Smuin (not even using the definite article) is in residence at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts through Christmas Eve. Santa Baby still strolls onstage, trailing the world’s longest feather boa, the work danced by Terez Dean, Erica Felsch, and Erin Yarbrough-Powell.
The first act, “Classical Christmas,” features white-clad dancers performing holiday favorites including Smuin classics “The Gloucestershire Wassail” and “Ave Maria,” as well as Amy Seiwert’s setting of “Carol of the Bells” and “Sleigh Ride,” plus Smuin’s nod to Hanukkah, “Licht bensh’n.”
The “Cool Christmas” second act of The Christmas Ballet features a modern mashup of numbers including a snow-flecked “White Christmas” with new choreography by Ben Needham-Wood, a flirty “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” and the return of “Bells of Dublin.” Also on the bill are “Drummer Boy,” Amy Seiwert’s rollicking “Home for the Holidays,” and dancers in hula skirts for “Christmas Island.”
“After a multitude of Messiahs, and a host of Halleluiahs,” says Ragazzi Continuo‘s release, “how about something different?” To that end, the vocal ensemble composed of young men who trained together from childhood in Ragazzi Boys Chorus, is presenting concerts with unusual programs.
“Christmastime is Here” is presented at 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 17, in San Francisco’s Trinity St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, and at 5 p.m. Dec. 18, in Palo Alto’s Unitarian Universalist Church. Tickets range from $15 to $25.
Selections run from the “title song” of Vince Guaraldi’s Peanuts classic “Christmastime Is Here” to Hebrew psalms set by Salamone Rossi (an Italian Jewish violinist and composer, who published his first work in 1589), and include the Perry Como classic “Home for the Holidays,” Rachmaninoff’s “Bogoroditse Devo” (All-Night Vigil), a newly commissioned work by Derek Sup (music director at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Oakland), an arrangement of the English folk tune “Oh, The Snow It Melts The Soonest.”
