Holiday in the City

HOLIDAY INN: Yesterday, the kids went with my parents to go see The 5th Avenue Theatre's production of an adaption of the classic Christmas film Holiday Inn. Here's CJ's review of the musical:

For this year's holiday season, the 5th Avenue Theatre is doing a production of Irving Berlin's Holiday Inn, a play based off the film of the same name. The plot of Holiday Inn revolves around Jim Hardy (played by Eric Ankrim), a Broadway actor's, purchase of Mason Farm, a farm in Connecticut, and his repurposing of the farm to be an inn open during various holidays.

The play began with David Armstrong, the Executive Director and the Artistic Director of the 5th Avenue Theatre, introducing himself and the play to the audience. The 5th Avenue Theatre is apparently the first American theatre to do an independent production of Holiday Inn this season. Noticeably, as seen in the program, a large number of the actors were either in Elf, Grease, or Rent, or any combination of the three.

The performances at Holiday Inn were a noticeable improvement over that of The Secret Garden (the last 5th Avenue Theatre production I went to), even with actors that are easy to mix up. The soundtrack is also significantly better than that of The Secret Garden, likely due to having been composed by famed Russian-American composer Irving Berlin.

Irving Berlin was a Russian-American musician and composer who is best known for composing the song "White Christmas". Irving Berlin lived for over a century and composed over a thousand songs during his lifetime. After moving from Russia to America, Berlin began a job as a singing waiter, and soon expanded his repertoire into lyrics, composition, and publishing his and other persons' music. Berlin wrote the scores to 13 different Broadway muscials and wrote songs for 12 Hollywood films.

Berlin was the subject of Jerome Kern's iconic maxim "Irving Berlin has no place in American music - he is American music."

BEFORE THE SHOW: Last year, before visiting a screening of Allegiance (a play starring George Takei), we learned about the Pacific Place Snow Show tradition. In the holiday season of every year, the Pacific Place mall does "Snow Shows", short events where "snowflakes" that appear to be made out of soap bits are dropped from the upper level of the mall, down onto the shoppers at the bottom. Santa Claus is prominently present at the events.

CJ and Annabelle meeting Santa:

Annabelle and Santa waving at me:

CJ got to take a 1-second video (intended to be a selfie) with Santa: