Boston Metro Spotlight: December 2008

There’s a bad lot blowing into town: those murderous Chicago broads, abetted by slick lawyer Billy Flynn — Tom Wopat, plucked from the Broadway production and now starring in the national tour, which alights briefly at the Colonial (December 9-14). Later in the month, the Colonial plays host to another itinerant headliner: Harry Connick Jr. heading up A Holiday Celebration (December 19-21).

The Huntington Theatre Company is enlivening its winter break with a new cabaret series, “Upstairs at the Calderwood,” at the Boston Center for the Arts. The exuberantly butch jazz diva/comedian Lea DeLaria (December 11-13) promises Christmas songs — surely with a twist, along with some provocative commentary. She’ll be followed by Judy Gold Is Mommy Queerest (December 26-31). The BCA’s Black Box theatre hosts Bad Habit Productions in The Laramie Project (December 5-13), commemorating the tenth anniversary of the hate crime that killed Matthew Shepard.

The Boston Playwrights’ Theatre welcomes the 11:11 Theatre Company premiering artistic director Brian Tuttle’s Bella Muerte, about a haunted romance between a hitherto carefree college student and a lonely, troubled flower-shop girl (December 5-13). Jack Neary’s First Night, presented by the Makeshift Theatre Company at the Cambridge Family YMCA (December 12-21), takes a lighter approach to young love, when a disaffected video clerk espies a former acquaintance who rekindles his ardor.

Cambridge’s Underground Railway Theater revives Alice’s Adventures Underground (December 4-18): it alternates with — and shares its skilled cast (Debra Wise, Steven Barkhimer, and Robert Najarian) with — Einstein’s Dreams (through December 28).

The big news in the ‘burbs is that the North Shore Music Theatre has temporarily jettisoned its long-standing A Christmas Carol tradition in favor of Disney’s High School Musical 2 (December 18-January 11). You can bet that local teens — including the ten in the cast — welcome the change of pace. Traditionalists can content themselves with a series of celebrity concerts: A Festival of Music (December 2), emceed by arts critic Joyce Kulhawik and starring Broadway’s George Dvorsky; Neil Sedaka (December 4); The Beach Boys Holiday Show (December 5); and Tony Bennett (December 7).

Meanwhile, Watertown’s New Repertory Theatre fills in with its own charming rendition of A Christmas Carol, complete with flying ghosts (December 14-18); for the more cynically inclined, New Rep is also running David Sedaris’s hilarious The Santaland Diaries in its black-box space (December 16-January 4). Waltham’s Reagle Players will feature guest soloist Sarah Pfisterer in the 26th edition of It’s Christmas Time (December 5-14). Worcester’s Foothills Theatre hopes to start its own tradition with an original variety show, Holidays at the ‘hills (December 6-28).

Heading west, you have your choice of two takes on the Frank Capra holiday classic. West Springfield’s Majestic Theater offers Joe Landry’s It’s a Wonderful Life – A Live Radio Play (December 4-21), and the Barrington Stage Company presents the one-man version, This Wonderful Life, written by Steve Murray, conceived by Mark Setlock, and starring Tom Beckett (December 3-20). Plus, you can get your A Christmas Carol fix at the Berkshire Theatre Festival (December 11-30).

Resisting the tide of holiday schmalz, the Gamm Theatre in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, is premiering Miss Pixie’s Cable Access Holiday Extravaganza!!! (December 11-23), featuring company member Casey Seyour Kim as a former child star — a headliner in such movie-musicals as Purim Parade, Little Miss Mark-up, and Lox, Stox and Bagels — reminiscing about the good old days pre-Betty Ford.

Providence’s Trinity Rep is going non-seasonal, with The Receptionist by Adam Bock (December 5- January 11), about a business-as-usual day at the office which turns chillingly dark once you realize what that business consists of.