A Show, Evolving, Makes a Point of Remaining Timeless
Anita GatesNovember 16, 2014: Radio City Music Hall hasn’t changed. Its cavernous red-and-gold Art Deco auditorium (né 1932) is as grand as ever in this year’s Radio City Christmas Spectacular, with two Wurlitzer organs booming holiday music. The Rockettes, a company that has been part of the Christmas show since 1933, will charm your socks off. If you’ve seen them do the “Wooden Soldiers” number only on television at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade lately, let me be the first to remind you: It is so much more fabulous in person. The Radio City show has changed, of course. The 3-D sleigh ride over Manhattan rooftops is giddy fun, like an oh-I-didn’t-realize-I-could-fly dream, but the giant GPS-directed snowflake bubbles are a little sci-fi and creepy. Old-fashioned cuteness triumphs, particularly in “The Nutcracker” with human-size teddy-bear ballerinas in tutus. The Christmas Spectacular is almost as much a celebration of New York as it is of the holidays. The message: You are so lucky to be here at this time of year. It’s a little worrisome when the Rockettes’ onstage tour bus, against a video-screen backdrop, drives boldly uptown on downtown Fifth Avenue and seems to zoom through parts of Central Park where there are no roads. But what the heck? That particular number ends with “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” with half the dancers in sparkly red, the other half in sparkly green, in a Times Square where every video screen shows holiday decorations, dancers or, alas, logos of the show’s corporate sponsors.
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