NEW YORK (AP) — Like a shiny toboggan wedged on wet snow, the Radio City Christmas Spectacular needs a little push.
The traditional holiday revue, which runs in New York through Dec. 30, essentially repeats last year's program, which varied little from the show in 2007. It isn't just a return visitor who might feel that some of the old routines are indeed showing age.
Give a worthy welcome back to Charles Edward Hall, the perennial Santa, a 90-minute trooper as he sings; dances; urges all to put on their 3-D glasses for a filmed sleigh ride around Manhattan; calls out the real stars, the high-stepping Rockettes; and promises, in vain, that "there will be new horizons to explore" for the spectacular.
The standards are here, game, but a little pokey — the "Nutcracker" minisuite, the woozy fall of the wooden soldiers, Santa's shop, shooting streamers and the procession of Jessie the Camel and other animals for the traditional "Living Nativity" finale. The Radio City Music Hall show, directed and choreographed by Linda Haberman, also sticks with more recent, overlong routines such as "The 12 Days of Christmas" and the Rockettes on a double-decker bus (it's always best to keep them standing) and has dropped a smash from years past, Mrs. Claus' "Man With a Bag."
The show itself may not carry you off, but you can lose yourself in the numbers: 14,096 AA batteries for stage mikes, 30,000 red dots for the Rockettes' cheeks, 350 loads of laundry per week. For the animals, 340 bales of hay and 560 loafs of 7-grain bread. Over the eight-week run, animals will drink 450 bottles of water, presumably priced lower per unit than the $4.50 charged at a Radio City concession stand.
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http://www.radiocitychristmas.com
