Boston Metro Spotlight: December 2009

What with the fierce competition posed by malls this time of year, theatrical openings tend to be sparse. But a notable touring offering happens to be The 101 Dalmations Musical (Wang Theatre, December 23-27), starring Rachel York as Cruella De Vil, alongside some audience-friendly canines. Also touring is Mamma Mia! which comes to the Colonial (December 15-27) courtesy of Broadway Across America.

SpeakEasy Stage is one of the city’s top companies, so when they get behind someone –in this case, spoken word artist George Watsky, a 23-year-old senior at Emerson College — you can trust their endorsement. Watsky performs his latest show, Where the Magic Happens — described as “an interactive poetic comedy” — at the Roberts Studio Theatre in the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts (December 6-7). Faculty and students of the New England Conservatory are collaborating on a new family-oriented production of the classic Engelbert Humperdinck opera Hansel and Gretel at the Emerson Majestic Theater (December 4-6). Boston University is also putting students and a distinguished faculty member, Paula Langton, together for David Rabe’s A Question of Mercy at the Stewart F. Lane and Bonnie Comley Studio 210 at the Boston University Theatre (December 2-19).

A much-loved tradition for the past quarter-century is the festive Boston Holiday Pops concerts at Symphony Hall (December 9-27). Some borderline-snarky silliness is also welcome during this sentimentality-prone season, hence the eager anticipation surrounding both the Gold Dust Orphans’ reprise of their hysterical movie mash-up All About Christmas Eve at the club Machine (December 11 – January 3) and the Boston premiere of Christmas Belles — a Southern farce about a nativity pageant gone hilarious awry — co-produced at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre by Company One and Phoenix Theatre Artists (December 4-19). At the tiny Factory Theatre, 11:11 Theatre Company premieres artistic director Brian Tuttle’s satirical biblical gloss, The Three (Un)Wise Men (December 11-19), in which Balthasar, Malchior, and Caspar hit the road, not in hopes of gifting the infant Messiah, but to shake Joseph down for a debt.

The Reagle Players, out in Waltham, will pour its usual lavish production values into the 27th annual edition of It’s Christmas Time (December 4-13), featuring Broadway’s Sarah Pfisterer as guest star and a local cast numbering in the hundreds. Watertown’s New Repertory Theatre revives its crowd-pleasing A Christmas Carol on the main stage, with an appropriately gruff Paul D. Farwell as Scrooge (December 6-17), while ceding its Downstage space to Kraig Swartz playing Crumpet, the disgruntled Macy’s elf, in David Sedaris’ The Santaland Diaries (December 16 – January 3). The Actors Shakespeare Project may be a bit calendrically off-kilter with their latest offering, A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Midway Studios on Fort Point Chanel (December 30 – January 31), but it should be a refreshing show, especially with mercurial Maurice Emmanuel Parent playing Puck.

Out in the Berkshires, Lenox’s Shakespeare & Company offers a contemporary urban spin on Cinderella: Cindy Bella (December 10-20), co-adapted and directed by Irina Brook. The piece transposes the classic fairy tale to a modern-day street accordionist saddled by the usual unsupportive relatives. In Stockbridge, the Berkshire Theatre Festival mounts its fourth production of A Christmas Carol (December 12-30), adapted by director Eric Hill, who also plays Scrooge.