Holiday favorites

Black Nativity

CLEAR AND PRESENT MANGER Levi Stewart and Malkia Stampley cradle their newborn in Congo Square’s Black Nativity.

Photo: Michael Brosilow

Black Nativity debuted on Broadway in the early ’60s with a cast that reportedly numbered in the triple digits—but Congo Square’s company of 14, accompanied by African drumming and powerhouse music by Davis and Ellington, voice such a soul-stirring, heart-swelling interpretation of Hughes’s gospel song-play that the Owen Theatre feels filled from stage to roof with singers. Traditionally a pastiche of Christmas hymns, folk and gospel songs, and poetry, the Nativity story here gets put in a contemporary, global framework by Maharaj. It depicts a pregnant “Mary” and “Joseph” struggling in Sudan, and adds some of Hughes’s seminal poetry—a move that feels too deliberate. But the pure potency of the cast elevates Black Nativity beyond parable and even sentimental holiday celebration to a passionate expression of faith and joy worth experiencing.—Megan Powell

It’s a Wonderful Life

Capra’s film, sentimental though it may be, gets its power from the thread of real-world darkness running through it. Dignity and sacrifice and the Mr. Potters of the world are real concerns to most of us, which is why George Bailey keeps getting reincarnated.
Some incarnations are better-intentioned than others (sooner or later we expect to see Will Smith in Aw Hell Naw Wonderful Life), and ATC’s version, staged as though we were sitting in on a live radio broadcast half a century ago, is blessedly sincere. The note-perfect cast members (playing ’40s versions of themselves playing the characters) poke gentle fun at their own aw-shucksness, but mostly they stick to the winning script. James Leaming gets George’s frustrated decency exactly right, but he’s only the center of a spot-on ensemble. Bring a hanky.—Kris Vire

Rudolph the Red-Hosed Reindeer

A script as satirical of popular culture as Cerda’s Rankin-and-Bass Rudolph parody—the 1964 stop-motion animation special is re-created in perfected tacky detail, but now misfit buck Rudolph is ostracized for wearing earrings and tights—has the shelf life of organic produce. What’s jaw-dropping, then, is how the wickedly gifted writer has continued to update it doggedly to keep it as up-to-the-minute as cable news and razor-sharp as the best iO team. A new ending that riffs on transgender identity has its finger directly on the queer free-press pulse. Unfortunately, in its tenth year and who knows how many replacement casts later, Rudolph’s once gleeful performative perversion now looks like a chore to perform, and most of the cast seems either exhausted or underequipped. That said, Elizabeth Lesinski, playing horny, pathetically booze-dependent Mrs. Claus, simply rocks. —Christopher Piatt

The Santaland Diaries

Funny: Everyman’s-outsider Sedaris has joined the populist ranks of annual holiday fare. Regrettably, with Theater Wit’s fourth iteration of the Macy’s elf, we don’t mean funny ha-ha. Santaland’s humor rests on the gap between the skeptical speaker and those who take Santa and his elves deadly seriously: “I think I’ll be a low-key sort of elf,” our narrator muses. But who’s wearing Sedaris’s stockings? An actor who couldn’t find a low key on a baby grand. So frenetic and Karen Walker–like is Fain that he seems more like the Santaland crazies Sedaris so vividly sends up than the author himself. When Fain asks the audience to remind him of his place in the story (and asks the tech person for his line), it’s so awkward it’s not even funny.—Novid Parsi

The Snow Queen

When it debuted last year in a spare, concert-like production, Smith’s folk-music take on Hans Christian Andersen’s wintry tale was still emerging, but engaging and family-friendly enough to continue developing. While it’s probably still not finished—and a few laughable dance sequences have been added—The Snow Queen is now brighter, cleaner and tighter, officially giving it the edge (at least for now) on revivals of A Christmas Carol. Equal parts Nordic folklore, staged concept album and love letter to Chicago’s ’70s folk music scene, Queen tells of two lifelong childhood pals separated by icy demons. The story is complicated—not nearly as black-and-white as American parables—so the expository narration can be blandly distancing. But Smith’s warm music is like heating your hands on the fire in an igloo. Keltz was good last year, but now he’s a boldly confident pop presence. As his pal, newly added Robinson matches him.—CP

A Christmas Carol

QUILL JOCKEY Yando steps into the Scrooge shoes at the Goodman.

Photo: Michael Brosilow

What I love in Dickens’s cautionary tale about how the world can harden you is how fiercely unsentimental it is. If it’s even competently staged, you find yourself brushing away a tear when Ebenezer finally crashes his nephew’s party or Tiny Tim gets hoisted onto his dad’s shoulder. That’s probably because Dickens isn’t afraid to show us first the cold menace of industrial capitalism. Goodman’s Carol, here in its 30th production, is now too sketched-from-memory to convey that menace. Also, the set is inelegant and noisy, and you can see the wires when the characters fly, which becomes a stronger metaphor each season. But Brown’s staging is still loving, and in particular his cheerful Cratchits’ dinner scene is wrenching. As for diabolic Yando playing Scrooge for the first time, were three decades really necessary to figure out that was a good idea?—CP

The Hipmas Carol

Those looking for Christmas cheer in half the time and at a fraction of the cost of more traditional Carols (and minus any Sedarisesque cynicism) have a hep alternative in Bohne and Zielinski. Their Beat retelling of the Dickens tale is in fine form in its eighth year. Inspired by Lord Buckley, the hipster comic of the ’40s and ’50s, the pair tells Scrooge’s story in slangy couplets, shifting in and out of various characters with ease; new guitarist Valadez provides strong, bluesy support. Despite the anti-Victorian style, the performers rarely stray from Dickens’s well-worn path; with only a smattering of stay-with-us asides, they stay true to Scrooge’s story and the author’s inspirational intentions. Tiny Tim never had it so good, man.—KV

A Wonderful Life

Merry Christmas, movie house. And thanks a million, movie house, for providing us with It’s a Wonderful Life, the durable holiday perennial that manages to explore noir techniques and brandish about Capra-esque nationalism yet still feels as toasty as a wool sweater. Unfortunately, movie house, the revival of an ill-advised musical adaptation of that classic looks like it was staged via e-mail. A schlocky book and corny score can always be rescued by a gifted cast, yet among this talented but underrehearsed troupe there seems to be a collective embarrassed acknowledgement that the floor has barely been painted and the snow effect is created by a disco ball. Bedford, in a word, falls.—CP