[NEohioPAL] Review of "White Christmas" at PlayhouseSquare

[Bob Abelman via NEohioPAL]

PlayhouseSquare offers a 'White Christmas' miracle

 

Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 



 

Warm and fuzzy feelings?  Check.  Dopey ear-to-ear grin?  Check.  Intellect intact and untouched?  Check.

 

It's remarkable how certain holiday entertainments can transport us back to our youth.   No matter how old we get, a "Charlie Brown Christmas" special, the stop-motion animation of "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" or "It's A Wonderful Life" on TV can fill our souls with fond remembrances, overload our senses with phantom smells and tastes from the past, and cover our arms with goose bumps.  

 

For many - ok, for me - the definitive holiday entertainment is the 1954 film "White Christmas."  In it, Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye are a pair of fast-talking song-and-dance WWII veterans.  Along with love interests Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen as a pair of song-and-dance sisters, they spend Christmas staging a musical revue in Vermont to aid their old Army General-turned-failing innkeeper.  

 

The film is bursting at the seams with Irving Berlin's most hummable melodies and brilliant lyrics, the best of which can be found in the title song.  Between the many wonderfully choreographed musical numbers is just enough charming banter, 1950's-era romance, and post-war patriotism to support and suspend the very thin and very corny storyline. 

 

As with most holiday entertainments with universal appeal, "White Christmas" is unburdened by any semblance of religious context or anything more complicated than a simple misunderstanding.  In the place of substance is treacle-sweet sentimentality, leaving audiences with the warm and fuzzy feelings and dopey ear-to-ear grins that come from being thoroughly charmed and entertained.

 

The stage version of this musical - which premiered in 2004, had a brush with Broadway in 2008, and has been on national tour ever since - is currently on stage at PlayhouseSquare.  

 

That it garners the same goose bumps as the original work is a Christmas miracle.  Well, a "White Christmas" miracle. 



For more of this review, go to:  http://www.news-herald.com/article/20141203/NEWS/141209793
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