What passes for Christmas entertainment is, of course, a wide range of offerings, including Handel’s Messiah, even though the bulk of the work relates to the Crucifixion, and English pantomime, even though it rarely includes anything to do with Christmas.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the Arts Club has chosen to present a stage version of the classic Little Women, a work that has sold millions of copies since it was first published in 1868.
In a very real sense I was influenced by this beloved children’s book at a young age, reading it at the the age of 8 and remembering I was not impressed.
A major part of my reaction was dictated by the fact that I was growing up in wartime Britain. For me, it was unfathomable that a group of girls whose father was participating in the Civil War would register no concerns about the war itself. In the play, the father is almost completely ignored.
More recently, when watching movie versions (of which there are many), I was appalled that the issues of the Civil War, most particularly that of slavery, were almost completely ignored in the book. To be fair, however, there is a brief mention of the issue in the widely praised film version starring Susan Sarandon and Winona Ryder.
Like that film, the Arts Club production is based on both volumes of the novel, covering the time from the four girls’ childhood to when two of them get married.
Unfortunately, the production spends 90 minutes dealing with the first part and only one hour with the second. This, for me, was problematic, as I found the interactions of the four young girls a little overly sweet for my taste.
Fortunately, the second act, in which the girls are now young women, was far more convincing and diverting.
I suspect the production is chiefly designed for younger audiences and for those who grew up with deep affection for the story. Young girls will likely find the entire evening beguiling, and the adults who accompany them will take pleasure in their reaction.
To return to my original point, the evening has only a little to do with Christmas as such, though the themes of love, family, charity, and caring are truly relevant to the season.
Of course, if one is simply looking for entertainment, one could do no better than see the filmed version of the recent stage production of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along.
The musical is notorious in that it is remembered as Sondheim’s only “flop,” closing as it did after 16 performances in 1981. Why this was the case is a mystery. Perhaps audiences rejected the show’s main conceit, in that it traces backward in time the changing relationship of three friends.
However, that journey is marked by a series of wonderful songs — all of them toe-tappingly melodic and all of them distinguished by the dazzling, clever, and pointed lyrics one has come to expect of Sondheim. The book itself is a clever commentary on friendship and what so often happens to it. Add to this the brilliant cast headed by Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez, and Daniel Radcliffe — yes, he of Harry Potter fame — proving that he is a talented song-and-dance man.
With a running time of 2½ hours (with no intermission), Merrily We Roll Along certainly provides the best bang for one’s holiday buck this season.
The only regret is that more Broadway shows are not filmed for screening in cinemas after closing. If this and the filmed version of Hamilton are any indication, movie companies are certainly missing a huge financial opportunity. But at least, this Christmas, we have one Broadway show in which to revel.
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