Radio City Comes to West Palm Beach

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The Rockettes Spread Holiday Cheer

By Skip Sheffield

Need cheering up?

The Radio City Christmas Spectacular starring the Rockettes is a sure thing to bring out the wide-eyed, happy child in a person of any age.

The “Christmas Spectacular” is in residence for the first time through Dec. 8 at Kravis Center in West Palm Beach.

Kravis Center is ideally-suited to house this massive, high-tech, multi-media show, with its huge stage, lofty fly space and wide aisles.

For those who have seen the Radio City Christmas Spectacular before there is a sense of continuity, for many of the 12 scenes with set and costume changes have been seen in years before. This show is custom-made for West Palm Beach, with local references made in the introduction of the fabulous dancing Rockettes in reindeer headgear hauling Santa Claus and his sleigh across the stage. Radio City singers are introduced in Scene 2 wishing us a Merry Christmas. The familiar “Twelve Days of Christmas” are done up Rockette-style with 160 tapping toes of the precision Rockette dancers.

Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker” is served up especially for children, with giant, over-stuffed dancing animals and a tiny dancing ballerina named Clara (Kate Gardinier alternating with Jessica Snider)

A personal favorite is the Parade of the Wooden Soldiers, culminating in a choreographed collapse finale.

“New York at Christmas” is done in spectacular fashion, with a nearly full-size red double-decker bus that rotates 360 while projections of downtown Manhattan offer the illusion of motion.

A traditional second act part of the show is the religious story of the birth of Jesus, quoting scripture in a “Living Nativity,” reminding Christians of the reason for the season.

A brief history of Radio City Music Hall and the Rockettes tells of the spectacular debut in 1933 to the low point in 1978 when the theater almost closed. What a loss that would have been for all Americans.

Happily Radio City Music Hall was renovated in 1999 and the Rockettes are alive and well in New York City and West Palm Beach, offering an upbeat alternative to our daily diet of bad news.

Tickets are $51.50-$143.50. Call 800-572-8471 or go to www.kravis.org.