A Texas Carol
Did you ever want a Christmas show to be fun and enjoyable without too much message or baggage? A warm and comfortable place with feel-good vibes? A play with heart? Well, if you can forego the fact that beloved “Mee-maw,” who the assorted Dinkle families are visiting on Christmas eve, is dead as a door nail, A Texas Carol is your holiday play.

The death is played for laughs, until it isn't, and for a brief moment near the end the tears may flow as the spirit of what Christmas truly exemplifies hits you square in the heart. It's a lovely feeling, for what leads up to the surprise is well-planned out by authors Jayme McGhan and Kevin Dean, executive artistic director and artistic producer at A.D. Players, and equally well-played out by the finely-tuned cast, most of whom are reprising their roles from last year's world premiere. The two new actors, Elizabeth Marshall Black and Dain Geist, mesh with the veterans as if they had created the roles.

Ryan Mc Gettigan's ranch living room and kitchen set is substantial with its rock fireplace, staircase, and pictorial outside expanse of Texas big sky; Bryan Nortin's lighting is understated; and Kristina Ortiz Miller's costumes are perfectly apropos to the characters, especially Blaze's over-the-top goth wardrobe of chains, black on black, and platform shoes from hell.

We can all relate to someone in this family who's falling to pieces, feels like an outsider, or constantly pricks the others, whether they mean to or not. This is an equal opportunity comedy, with a little hint of You Can't Take It With You or a much gentler, less crass Weekend at Bernie's. It works exceedingly well.

Gretta (Marshall Black) discovers Mee-Maw, with brother Erik (Geist) soon behind. There just isn't a convenient time to tell any one. Everyone's on somebody else's case the moment they arrive, so the discovery goes unsaid. Certainly Ginny (Kara Greenberg) can't be told, or her karma will fly out the window. She's now into new-age full time, and her spiritual healing would take a nosedive if told her chants for grandma didn't work at planned. Kids Mya (Olivia Swasey) and Blaze (Ian M. Gallagher) are in their own destructive little worlds, so they're out. Gretta and hubby Van (Jeff McMorrough) are planning to get a divorce, so he's definitely not going to be told. Hugo (Kevin Crouch), a Canadian former pro-hockey star and Ginny's new squeeze and Blaze's antagonist, is the ultimate family outsider so he's a no-tell.

As the family dynamics shift and change focus, it will ultimately be Mee-Maw who puts the family right, or sets them on the path to reclamation, like the spirits do to Scrooge. Her Christmas presents to each of them begins the healing. Delivered by Mee-Maw's boyfriend Jerry (Marion Arthur Kirby, an A.D. Players veteran pro) in an emotional monologue of how they met and their short life together, and how much she really knew her family and their desires, this family-friendly comedy concludes with the warmest of holiday cheer. It leaves you glowing.

McGhan and Dean are working on a Dinkle family sequel or two. Like Sondheim's Into the Woods, once you get your wish, the real journey begins.

A Texas Carol continues through December 23. 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. A.D. Players, 5420 Westheimer. For more information, call 713-526-2721 or visit adplayers.org. $34-$62.


The Ugly Xmas Sweater Musical!
How bad a person do you have to be to kick a puppy during the holiday season? I ask this because Theatre Under the Stars' world premiere holiday show, The Ugly Xmas Sweater Musical!, deserves some kind of thrashing. And I've got to kick it.

Co-created by TUTS' artistic director Dan Knechtges, a Tony Award nominee and one of the brightest stars in our current Houston musical firmament, he should know better. I know he knows better, because his work since becoming TUTS' leader in 2017 has been exemplary. Look at his recent production of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. Perfection. He knows what he's doing. And he's a constant nominee or winner of our Houston Theater Awards for Best Director or Choreographer or Best Artistic Director. So how did this one go so wrong?

I haven't a clue.

Co-written by Knechtges and Megan Larche Dominick, the premise is pre-SitCom.101. Uniform manufacturer Regalia has been bought out by a foreign conglomerate that wants to downsize their holdings and sell off Regalia, forcing the long-time employees into retirement or unemployment. At the company Christmas party, the intrepid workers band together with a plan to make ugly Christmas sweaters. Their idea will make a fortune and save the company. That's it. No other conflict needed. Except for padding, a whole bunch of padding, a '50s snowsuit full of padding.

The “interactive” part is that we, the audience, are the employees, and either asked to vote for this plan, or be used as crash dummies to model their own ugly sweaters (that they've been asked to wear to the theater), or, later, as the models for what the design team has cooked up as prototypes. None of these ideas works. Yes, some of the audience's choices are ripe for ridicule and ad-lib from the cast; and the others chosen to be “models” are so generic as to be unfunny: an old guy, a kid, a leggy beauty or some type like it, who are made to strut down the runway in truly hideous outfits that are more eyesore than comedy. There's no show, really, except for the musical numbers that use Christmas carols with different words, like “Regalia” interspersed with Handel's “Hallelujah.” It's that kind of lyric writing.

The performers are game enough to give this feeble show all they've got, and they sell it incessantly, shamelessly. Julia Krohn, as HR director Cheryl, or some job at the company, I lost interest, has a recurring motif of her dreams being squashed as a designer when she appeared on – and lost – a design reality TV show. She spirals back to that more than once, which is one time too many. But Krohn saves herself with a magnificent soprano and stage presence that is hard to beat. Nicolas Garza, as Regalia's social media influencer, dons his very gay apparel as he rocks the runway with bitchy retorts and snappy comebacks; theater pro Kevin Cooney gets all the bad dad jokes; while Kiara Caridad, as Cheryl's daughter, shines in a rap version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” But everyone's on one track throughout.

The most intriguing character is the German dreadnought Olga, overseeing the demise of Regalia. Brooke Wilson, in couture black, with a different hairdo every appearance, eats the stage alive. She's the life force this musical lacks. Every time she struts on, with thunder clap sound effect, this tiny little endeavor expands. If there's any reason to see this show, she's it.

What Ugly Sweater has in abundance is theater know-how, something Knechtges knows better than anyone. The pacing, such as it is with this lame material, is first-rate. The show glides beautifully, and is lit to perfection by Hudson Davis with all the Broadway technical bells and whistles at his disposal. Costume designer Colleen Grady outdoes herself in tacky; while the updated carols are magnificently arranged and performed by Michael Holland on what looks like a series of synthesizers or keyboards arrayed onstage. He's a show in himself.

The audience laughed at the hoary gags and the parade of audience members on stage, and seemed to enjoy themselves, so don't take my word for it. But if I found this present under my tree, rest assured it would be re-gifted with all possible speed.

The Ugly Xmas Sweater Musical!  continues through December 24. 1:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sundays; 7 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays; 7:30 p.m. Fridays; 1:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays. Theatre Under the Stars, 800 Bagby. For more in formation, call 713-558-8887 or visit TUTS.com. $40 -$69.

We Need a Little Christmas
Do you remember joining family and neighbors around the old upright and singing favorite carols while the adults got sloshed on eggnog? Yeah, I don't either. Maybe I'm remembering old movies and Christmas specials from Bing Crosby or Andy Williams, but if you want to rekindle such fond memories, then Paul Hope's special edition of his Cabaret series at Ovations Nightclub will warm you on these chilly Mondays in December.

This is standard operating procedure for Hope and his lounge act. Gather some remarkable vocal talent and let them loose on some theme, be it Irving Berlin in Hollywood in the '30s, the lyrics of Hoagy Carmichael and Dorothy Fields, or Frank Loesser shows from the '60s. It's unbeatable for entertainment and musical theater nostalgia. Friends of the Great American Songbook eat this up.

For the holiday season, Hope has added a new revue, We Need a Little Christmas, to his long list of previous shows. Needless to say, this one features songs of Christmas, some from Broadway (the revue's title song is now a seasonal classic from Jerry Herman's Mame), some standards, and some refreshingly novel selections, like the French “Carol of the Birds,” alternately known as “Whence Comes this Rush of Wings?,” sung a cappella by the talented group.

The singers gathered here are Seth Daniel Cunningham, former Metropolitan Opera baritone Richard Paul Fink, Manhattan School of Music graduate Pantelis Karastamatis, Lauren Salazar, Tamara Siler, Whitney Zangarine, and Hope, who adds to the relaxed fun with his reminiscences of his decades on the Houston stage in various holiday shows. Musical direction is by Patti Rabaza at the piano, who is also an accomplished singer, witnessed by her silky rendition of the Carpenters' “Merry Christmas, Darling.”

A few other highlights: Siler beguiles with Carol Hall's “Hard Candy Christmas” from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas; Karastamatis wraps his luscious voice around “In the Bleak Midwinter;” Cunningham and Zangarine flirt through Cy Coleman and Michael Stewart's “Lovers on Christmas Eve” from their musical I Love My Wife; Salazar's radiance sparkles through “The Holly and the Ivy;” Fink's burnished baritone purrs through the French Provencal carol “Bring a Torch;” and Hope displays his theater mastery with a haunting rendition of Bock and Harnick's “In My Own Lifetime,” from The Rothschilds.

Celebrating Christmas through traditional carols or lesser-known Broadway songs, via the theater magic that Hope inspires and cultivates, and performed with such captivating vitality, is one special present.

We Need a Little Christmas continues at 7:30 p.m. December 4 and December 11. Ovations Night Club, 2536 Times Boulevard. For more information, visit paulhopecabarets.org. $20-$35.

Hansel and Gretel
German composer Engelbert Humperdinck was Richard Wagner's protege. He helped stage the premiere of Parsifal at Bayreuth, the theater Wagner built for himself, and even wrote some connecting music for the “Transformation Scene,” when the set couldn't be changed quickly enough. Humperdinck was also Wagner's most devoted acolyte, in thrall to opera's mythic monster. He tried his entire career to get out from the shadows, but he was hooked. Wagner's influences on harmony, texture, and orchestration obsessed him.

You can almost hear the Titan humming in the background during certain passages of Hansel and Gretel (1893), Humperdinck's greatest success. Although there's plenty of heavy neo-romanticism throughout the score, H&G is leavened, saved, if you will, by a youthful naivete and an abundance of folk tunes and dances, bird song, heavenly choir, and that plangent soft “Evening Prayer.” The Grimm tale is buoyed and sweetened.

What is not so sweet – and now heavy as the Hindenburg – is Opera in the Heights' production of Humperdinck's Germanic marzipan for children of all ages. Where is the charm, the quaintness, even the magic that envelops this big/little opera? All has been crushed under amateurish, psychedelic projections that add absolutely nothing to the work and stop its mood dead.

Unless you're Tom Hanks in Big, adults playing children is fraught with problems. It's difficult enough to pull this off with seasoned singers, but director James Marvel performs no marvels here. Mezzo Kayla Nanto (Hansel) comes off best because her voice is rich and plangent all while taking a rolling
backward fall and looking natural. She's wondrously expressive and gives Hansel an irrepressible attitude of boyishness.

Soprano Priscilla Salisburg, though graced with a lovely clear voice with plenty of agility, has no heft to her; she gets drowned even in Derek Clark's reduced orchestration of Humperdinck's lush Teutonic score. Her frantic skipping and pseudo girlish behavior looks wrong and out of place. Everyone looks awkward and tentative, as if they haven't had enough rehearsal.

Soprano Julie Jackson's Sandman and Dewfairy, though nicely sung, but again in a voice too small even in intimate Lambert Hall, have stepped out of some disco nightmare. The Sandman is swathed in gold lamé and the Dewfairy is wrapped in a fringed rainbow vest. Where the hell are we, Studio 54? The choices Marvel makes are out of step, out of time, out of nowhere.

Mezzo Kimberly Sogioka has the thick timbre for Mother, and mercifully she fills the hall. Baritone Byron J. Mayes, memorable a few seasons ago as slick Dr. Dulcimara in OITH's juke-box Elixir of Love, has lost none of his sonorous tone, but he's given such clunky stage action that his effect is minimized. Mezzo Whitney Robinson comes off well enough as the Witch, but here, too, her direction is amateurish and unformed. She looks great in her candy cane puffed dress and bustier, but those spiked epaulets do her no favors. Marvel's choices in costume waver from Germanic peasant, wrapped braids, fustian breeches, to outer space, to high school pageant.

The production looks cheap and unfocused, ragged around the edges. The sure, saving grace to the entire evening is the wondrous sound elicited from the orchestra and the children's chorus. The horns and woodwinds were especially strong under maestro Eiki Isomura, who coaxes sweetness and then tempests from the players. Although the kids didn't always know what they were doing on stage, they sounded marvelously in sync. Praise to their vocal coaches Jessica Colmenares, Mary Kay Buehler, and Siwei Zhang.

If opera companies need a holiday show, it's either Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors, maybe Joel Thompson's The Snowy Day (although it hasn't shown legs as of yet), or Humperdinck's fairy tale. This version would be no one's choice.

Hansel and Gretel continues at 7:30 p.m. December 8; 2:00 p.m. December 9. For more information, call 713-861-5303 or visit operaintheheights.org. $29 - $85.