The Columbus Dispatch

Magic, music and more

The family-friendly ‘Magical Cirque Theatre’

- Margaret Quamme

Those who have had their fill, at least for the moment, of “The Nutcracker” and “A Christmas Carol” might want to check out the family-friendly “Magical Cirque Christmas.”

The show, with a new storyline this year, combines magic, comedy, music and circus acts, and will be performed on Dec. 10, at the Palace Theatre.

The show was conceived this summer, when it was still murky whether shows would be allowed to go on at all, and whether internatio­nal travel would be possible.

As a result, the creators of the show decided to work exclusivel­y with performers who were already based in the United States.

“Because none of us knew exactly what would be happening come the winter, we started reaching out to some of our favorite artists, and luckily a lot of them were very excited about working together and with us,” said Jim Millan, who created and directed the show with Louanne Madorma and Carisa Hendrix, who plays “Lucy Darling,” the show emcee's and chief magician.

Millan spoke by phone from Tysons, Virginia, where the show was about to do its third performanc­e.

After the summer planning period, where, Millan said, “My kids had the experience of me playing really loud Christmas music in August,” the group moved on to staging, and then to rehearsals in Las Vegas a month ago.

A tech team has been going out to the various venues ahead of the tour, working out just how aerial acts and other logistical­ly challengin­g numbers will work out from place to place.

“They look at every specification of the theatre we're looking at before we go in. They'll say, well, we have to advance our acrobatics rig up stage a few feet. It's like a very carefully planned blueprint of how our show fits in,” Millan said.

The 90-minute show, which runs without an intermissi­on, is held together by a simple story.

“There's a Father Time figure at the beginning of the show, whose job is to change the seasons. And this year, he's just not feeling it. And so a helpful sprite named Lucy Darling, who is played by the magician Carisa Hendrix, shows up magically, in a giant empty box. It's an amazing illusion. And she volunteers to help. And of course, the more she helps, the more mixed up things get,” Millan said.

“And what starts to happen is that we go through different Christmase­s. We

see a Christmas in 1990. We see a Christmas in 1950. These are all embodied by performers doing different kinds and styles of things,” he said.

Performers include trapeze artists, other aerialists, “foot jugglers,” acrobats and more.

Supplying the songs will be Postmodern Jukebox singer Therese Curatolo.

“We use popular Christmas music from those different eras. So you'll hear our singer do 'Last Christmas' by Wham! in the 1990s, or 'Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree' in the '50s, and you'll see an amazing aerial act while that's going on. So we flit around in time. There are a lot of remixes of music done in a contempora­ry way,” Millan

said.

“It's a great way of creating a fresh kind of entertainm­ent, because the different acts are set in different eras, you get to do something a little bit evocative of different times.”

And then there is Hendrix's creation, Lucy Darling, who ties the whole production together.

“She's an incredible improviser and comedian,” Millan said. “She does spectacula­r magic, she makes the audience laugh, she's interactin­g with families and talking with people in the audience.

"By the end, we're all sort of involved in her adventure, as well as having seen a lot of great magic, a lot of great music and a lot of great circus arts.”

margaretqu­amme@hotmail.com

 ?? MATT BISHOP ?? Dazzling aerial acts are among the entertainm­ent that will be featured Dec. 10, in “Magical Cirque Christmas” at the Palace Theatre.
MATT BISHOP Dazzling aerial acts are among the entertainm­ent that will be featured Dec. 10, in “Magical Cirque Christmas” at the Palace Theatre.

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