Good morning. Happy holidays. Here’s something of particular interest to all-ages aficionados and puppet-heads:
This year’s Revels show features “life-sized puppets,” and combines the legends of Gryla and the Finnish folkloric fox figure. (Say that five times fast!) Like a modern jerk, I have YouTube-searched both for our general edification. Gryla is a Krampus-like Christmas ghoul who eats naughty children. She’s got 13 merry bearded sons (suspiciously similar to the 7 dwarves) whose names denote their idiosyncracies. “Pot-Licker” and “Window-Peeper” are two of the cohort.
The Finnish fox figure—or Fire Fox—yes, like the browser—moves so fast that its fur sparks static and forms into the Northern lights. Do you want to see this notorious child-chomper and this sparkling vulpine wonder singing and dancing on stage? I kinda do. Revels. Be there or be eaten.
This weekend is a mini-Festival of Last Chances: The Humans closes at Artists Rep, a chance-within-a-chance to see grande dame Luisa Sermol tread the boards before she flies south (to the Bay area) for the winter (and beyond). Bobby Bermea has penned her a respectful retrospective and farewell. It’s also your last grasp at An Act of God, and the last splash of Ellen Margolis’ Pericles Wet, which, according to John Longenbaugh, takes welcome liberties with what scholars consider one of Shakespeare’s least-cohesive plays, highlighting an incestuous undercurrent and making sport with pop-culture references like Popeye and Spongebob.
Anything else? Everything else! A deep and steamy pot of holiday wassail.
I refer you to my two-weeks-prior forecast which is currently coming true. Click links. Buy tix. Chime in on comments. And adieu.