The panto season is nearly upon us back at home, of course, but Christmas is celebrated in New York on a bigger and more lavish scale than anywhere I know – and everyone seems to join in. Even though New York is apparently home to the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel, and has the biggest concentration of Jewish people in one city than even Jerusalem, this is a holiday season that appeals to the entire city. The ball starts rolling with last week’s Thanksgiving celebrations, and doesn’t stop now till Christmas. On Monday night the Christmas tree at Lincoln Center had its official lighting; tonight it’s the turn of the one at Rockefeller Centre.
But even if Broadway got its Grinch back for Christmas (with Dr Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the first show to be hit in the stagehands’ strike, re-opening last Friday in a complicated arrangement with the union that suggested it should never have been targeted in the first place), the biggest show of them all is always the annual Radio City Christmas Spectacular.
This year it is celebrating its 75th birthday, and I saw it last night at 5pm, the third of three shows they did yesterday (while tomorrow there are four, and on Friday, five shows in succession!) – and West End actors complain about two-show days!
There’s no theatre in the world quite like Radio City, which has a majestic sense of occasion and celebration from the moment you enter the vast, cathedral-like mirrored grand foyer. And there’s no show quite like their Christmas spectacular, either in terms of the eye-popping silliness of its massed ranks of perfectly-synchronised Rockettes (one stumbled last night, creating a rare moment of breaking ranks, but the smile remained in place and she recovered quickly) or its cheesy, campy and corny sense of spectacle that this year included a Santa sleigh-ride over Manhattan in 3D (glasses provided with the playbill).
From the 5,000 plus seats of Radio City to the 100 or so intimacy of a cabaret room, I returned to Feinstein’s at the Regency immediately afterwards last night to see the opening night of its namesake’s annual seasonal show at his home venue, and it’s a wonderful privilege to be able to see Michael Feinstein at such close quarters every year. Yes, it comes at a price, as I blogged about when I saw Chita Rivera here last week; but then this was a no-expenses spared musical occasion in every sense. Joined by a band of six – including such luminaries of the jazz and cabaret scene as veteran guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli and bassist Jay Leonart – plus three backing singers, Feinstein turns this small room into a concert stage; but while the programme concentrates on seasonal favourites from Jingle Bells to White Christmas, the wonderful thing about a Feinstein gig is that he always surprises you with something you’ve never heard before. Last night there were such terrific treats as ‘The Steam is on the Beam’, from a forgotten (and maligned at the time) 1942 show Beat the Band; and there was no beating this band and singer as they steamed through it.
It was a quintessential New York experience, made all the more so by the fact that at the very next table was Woody Allen with partner Soon-Yi. For a couple of wonderful New York hours, Broadway’s current woes were left far behind.
