PhotobucketThere’s a moment very ear­ly on in An Ada­gio Christ­mas when the whole the­atre gasped in uni­son, and both our daugh­ters stood up in shock. The moment passed, the shock fad­ed, but they nev­er quite set­tled back past the edges of their seats. Like the rest of us, from then on they were hooked.

An Ada­gio Christ­mas is a retuned-for-Christ­mas ver­sion of the ear­li­er Down­stage pro­duc­tion of the same name; a series of loose­ly linked vignettes whose per­for­mances encom­pass var­i­ous cir­cus skills as well as music, singing, danc­ing, and com­e­dy.

While there’s lit­tle nar­ra­tive in the usu­al sense, there’s plen­ty to watch and mar­vel at. Any­one who enjoyed cir­cus per­for­mances like Grav­i­ty and Oth­er Myths will find much here to enjoy. Rowan Hey­don White and Mason West are both noth­ing short of amaz­ing per­form­ers (our youngest’s descrip­tion of Mason West: “the man with the cap was very strong and clever”).

There’s also plen­ty to laugh at (though there might well be some slight­ly dif­fer­ent joke selec­tions for the mati­nees). We all enjoyed the comedic ele­ments, with Angela Green’s ven­tril­o­quist’s dum­my and Jen­ny MacArthur’s bal­le­ri­na both the sub­ject of lat­er hys­ter­i­cal shared remem­ber­ings.

The finale was beau­ti­ful­ly sung by Asale­mo Tofete, and the per­for­mance end­ed with a won­der­ful­ly Christ­massy touch that our eldest liked so much she lat­er repli­cat­ed it for her­self.

An Ada­gio at Christ­mas is a great night out for the whole family—whatever and whomev­er you con­sid­er your fam­i­ly to be. We’ve been rec­om­mend­ing it to every­one we know.

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