Gentri Christmas at the Eccles 2023

Last night I went to my first Christmas concert of the season and I definitely picked a good one!  The Gentlemen Trio, or Gentri as they are more commonly known, was established when Casey Elliott, Bradley Quinn Lever, and Brad Robins were cast in a production of Les Miserables at HCT (they recently reprised their roles of Jean Valjean, Enjolras, and Marius, respectively, in another HCT production) and then continued singing together after the run was over.  My sister Marilyn is a huge fan so we went to their Christmas concert last year and we loved it so much we decided to make it a tradition!  This year's show at the Eccles Theater was amazing!  They began with "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and the arrangement included snippets from "Carol of the Bells" and I really liked it.  They continued with "Little Drummer Boy," "Gesu Bambino," and an incredible arrangement of "Still Still Still" with snippets from the score of the movie The Mission (I love this song because I sang it in choir in college).  They were joined by vocalist Yaphet Bustos for "Angels We Have Heard on High" and by the Rise Up Children's Choir for "Do You Hear What I Hear?" and "What Child Is This?" (which featured the Christmas story acted by several members of the choir in costume).  The first set ended with a bluesy mashup of "Go Tell It On The Mountain" and "Joy To The World" with Brad Wheeler on harmonica.  After the intermission, they performed "We Three Kings" with another guest vocalist, Ellie Barry, and then "I Saw Three Ships."  Next they had their music director Stephen Nelson arrange a piece on the spot from a movie score and a Christmas song suggested by the audience (they did this last year as well).  Our audience picked the score from The Lord of the Rings trilogy and "Mistletoe" by Justin Bieber and, believe it or not, the result was really good!  Next they performed an original song called "Somewhere In Your Silent Night" which is very moving.  A mashup of "Coventry Carol" and "Poor Wayfaring Stranger" with dramatic themes played by a cello was definitely my favorite of the night but a close second was their arrangement of "O Holy Night," which is my favorite Christmas song, featuring the Rise Up Children's Choir.  The concert concluded with a powerful rendition of "O Come All Ye Faithful" with Bustos, Barry, and the children.  Both Marilyn and I loved this show and it was the perfect way to begin this holiday season.  There are a few tickets available for both of the shows today (go here) and I highly recommend getting one!

Note:  I always hope that I will hear "O Holy Night" performed live at least once during the holiday season and I am so happy that I got to hear it last night!

'Tis the Season

I actually put my Christmas tree up last week because I like to enjoy it for as long as possible (one year I put it up on Halloween).  One of my favorite things to do during the season is watch Christmas movies with just the tree illuminating the living room.  I am also looking forward to lots of holiday traditions, performances (including several Christmas concerts and four productions of A Christmas Carol), and time with my family (my niece and her fiance will be here for some epic games of Shanghai rummy).

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Thanksgiving 2023

I spent Thanksgiving with my family (Sean came home from college but we were missing Tashena and her fiance Tucker who live in Washington) and it was a wonderful day.  We had a somewhat non-traditional dinner because we had ham instead of turkey but we did have all of the other side dishes including potatoes, yams, stuffing, asparagus, pomegranate salad (a family favorite), a relish tray, and rolls.  Everything was delicious!  In the evening we had pie and lots of other treats (my sisters are very good bakers) and then we played Shanghai rummy (an absolutely crazy card game that really gets going).  I am so grateful for my family and that I am able to spend so much time with them.  I hope that you had a happy Thanksgiving with the people you love!

Wish

I have had the tradition of taking my nephew to the new Disney/ Pixar movie over the Thanksgiving break ever since he was a little boy (we have seen The Good Dinosaur, Moana, Coco, Frozen II, Encanto, and Strange World together) but he did not want to see Wish with me last night so I went by myself.  Maybe I should have listened to him.  King Magnifico (Chris Pine) is a powerful sorcerer who has the power to grant wishes.  He and his wife Queen Amaya (Angelique Cabral) establish the kingdom of Rosas and, to keep the inhabitants safe, he has them give him their wishes which he keeps safe until he grants one every month in an elaborate ceremony. A young girl named Asha (Ariana DeBose) hopes that King Magnifico will grant her grandfather Sabino's (Victor Garber) wish in honor of his 100th birthday but she learns that he is very selective about the wishes he grants in order to control the population for their own good.  Dismayed about the fact that her grandfather's wish is deemed too dangerous to grant, she wishes on a Star, instead, and it comes to help her which threatens the power of King Magnifico and he turns to forbidden magic to stop it.  It is only when Asha realizes that the power of stardust is within her and all of the inhabitants of Rosas that they are able to rescue their wishes.  The animation, which is a combination of computer generated and hand drawn, is absolutely beautiful.  DeBose has an amazing voice and I really enjoyed her vocal performance and some of the songs, especially "Knowing What I Know Now."  Pine is a fun and interesting villain who starts out with good intentions but lets absolute power corrupt him absolutely and his song "This is the Thanks I Get?" was a highlight for me.  Having said that, I found the story to be very disappointing.  There is a lot that happens simply to evoke nostalgia rather than advance the plot, including when Star grants the wish of all of the woodland animals to speak (the only wish it actually grants) and the inclusion of unnecessary side characters based on the seven dwarfs.  It seems like an origin story for many other better Disney movies and it is not very compelling or memorable.  I didn't necessarily hate it but I wish it had been better.

May December

Last night my nephew and I went to the Broadway to see May December and we both found it to be incredibly thought-provoking.  Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) is a television actor who inserts herself into the lives of Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore) and her husband Joe Yoo (Charles Melton) because she will be portraying Gracie in an upcoming independent movie about their scandalous romance.  Gracie had an extramarital affair with Joe, who was then in seventh grade, was arrested, gave birth to their first child in prison, and then married him when she was released.  Twenty years later, as their twins are about to graduate from high school, they seem like the perfect suburban family but, as Elizabeth starts delving into the past, the facade comes crumbling down.  This is really campy, with one of the funniest line readings I've ever heard and an incredibly melodramatic score, but then it becomes absolutely devastating.  All three actors give amazing performances because their characters are so complex and reveal themselves little by little.  Gracie seems confident and happy around Elizabeth and her neighbors and broken and fragile behind closed doors with her family but then we see how passive-aggressive she is with her daughters and how manipulative she is with Joe.  Moore uses changes in her facial expressions and voice, slipping into and out of a breathy lisp, to show her character's intent and it is masterful.  Elizabeth seems like an ambitious method actor trying to understand the character she will be portraying so that she can do justice to the story but then she starts to blur the lines between reality and art to actually become Gracie and her behavior is just as predatory.  Portman's performance is brilliant because she eventually mimics all of Gracie's mannerisms and the transformation is so subtle that you don't realize how unsympathetic she has become.  Joe protests that he is not a victim and that he has been happily married to Gracie for twenty years but he is constantly bullied and belittled by her.  Melton's role is less showy but no less powerful, especially when Joe realizes the full impact of what has been done to him (by both women).  There is so much to unpack with all of these characters and it is fascinating!  I loved the use of mirrors because we eventually see who these characters really are when reflected by others and the focus on Joe's hobby of raising monarch butterflies is the perfect metaphor for the transformation these characters go through.  The more I think about this movie, the more I like it and I would definitely recommend it.