OCR Text |
Show 'Amahl and the Night Visitors' and 'Babes in Toyland9 offer holiday magic at City Rep p : : ' 1 . , f ' - 1 cLl " v.-' J -J V sent to allowing young Amahl to travel with them as they continue their journey. "Amahl" and the part of his mother are multiple-cast, "with young William McCaa doing an excellent job as the young boy, and his mother, portrayed by Anne Rasmussen, demonstrating a beautiful beau-tiful voice. The music composed by Gian Carlo Mcnotti is difficult to perform, and the lyrics are hard to understand at times, but both do a credible job with them. The Kings are portrayed by Jer-rod Jer-rod Murphy, Michael D. Ensign and James A. Dale, and the Page, Kenneth Ken-neth Ezell Bass, demonstrates an excellent bass voice. Richard Chatelain's small orchestra or-chestra adds to this experience, though the music's a bit loud at points. And the shepherds and villagers give an added dimension to this show, particularly the dance sequence (which features at least one local resident-Bountiful High senior Maria McKay). The shows combine for a festive Holiday experience. They are not to be taken as serious dramatics, but City Rep does provide enjoyable options for celebrating the season. City Rep's phone number is 532-6000. By TOM HARALDSEN This marks the final week of two Christmas productions at City Rep, the Salt Lake Repertory Theatre at 148 South Main in Salt Lake City. Final performances of "Babes in Toyland" will be Thursday evening at 7:30 p.m., and a Saturday matinee mati-nee at 2 p.m. "Amahl and the Night Visitors" will conclude with a 7:30 j.m. show on Friday, fj "Babes" is the magical story of ome of our favorite storybook characters who gather to celebrate Christmas. This writer was immediately imme-diately intrigued by the cast-after all, these were my heroes. These were the characters who kept me from having to go to bed early as a child, as I heard their stories. Victor Herbert's Christmas operetta is a colorful, whimsical production, great for the family, and spiced with just enough one-liners, in true City Rep form, to make it enjoyable en-joyable for the entire family, though some of the puns are in pretty bad taste at times. It is the story of Widow Peep, who lives in the shoe with her 13 children, among them lovely daughter Bo Peep. Of course, the evil landlord Barnaby and his sidekick side-kick Rumple are trying to make life tough for Widow Peep, threatening foreclosure on her. Though Bo Peep is in love with Tom-Tom, she reluctantly reluc-tantly agrees to marry the evil Barnaby Bar-naby in order to secure the mortgage mort-gage for her mother. Fortunately, all the characters of the village, including would-be heroes Deedle and Dum, come up with a plan to help free Bo Peep Baby from this awful fate, and thus justice is served in Fairytale Land once again. James Horrocks and Steve Ni- chol are Barnaby and Rumple, respectively, re-spectively, with Rosalie Richards playing Widow Peep and Jennifer O'Haley as Bo Peep. All do a fine job, particularly O'Haley, who is marvelous as usual. Brighton High student J. Alan Brodine does a great job as Tom-Tom, and Dennis Walker Wal-ker and Nels Holmgren, as Deedle and Dum, are lots of fun as well. There are many fun moments here, the only possible problem being be-ing the artificial smoke produced during a couple of sequences. The smoke was disturbing to the audience, au-dience, but that didn't distract from the overall effect of the play. Particularly fun were the little lost sheep, the toy soldiers and the bogeymen. Costume Director Katie Hettinger has done a fine job with the characters in this play, and Owen Richardson has a fine set design de-sign as well. A much different, more serious and considerably shorter look at the Christmas season is "Amahl." This is a true operetta, there is no spoken dialogue, but the 45-minute show tells of the visit of the three wise men to a small shepherd's cottage in Israel, as they made their way towards Bethlehem. Amahl is a typical young boy, prone to tell exaggerated tales. So his mother is very skeptical when the boy proclaims to have seen a bright star in the heavens, and becomes be-comes downright angry when, while sleeping, the boy awakens her to say that three Kings have arrived at the cottage. As the story unfolds, the Kings are welcomed by the mother and son, and are recipients of presents brought to them by the shepherds and villagers. Eventually, they all learn of the marvelous happenings in Bethlehem, and the Kings cr The award winning Kathy Squires Performing Jazz Company will be appearing at the Five Points Mall and the Layton Hills Mall throughout the holidays. Members of the group recently won first place awards in two national competitions. Shown are, (front) Michelle Clark, and Jared Christensen. (middle) Mary Lynn Ball, Erika Chambers, Jennifer Jen-nifer Alexander, and Bethany Brady, (back) Becky Goodrich, Melissa Coombs, Denise Haney, Diedre Mavin, Kym Caldwell, and Lindsey McGregor. |