Thursday, December 1, 2011

Madrigal Christmas

Stan Harris directs the PHS choir during the Madrigal Feast
Last night, I attended the dress rehearsal of the Palmer High School music department's Madrigal Feast, held annually as a fundraiser at the Protestant Presbyterian Church.

And, except for a few minor senior moments (hey, it's a dress rehearsal. Actors are allowed to miss a few lines) and a doomed skit involving Darth Vader, Princess Leia and Beowulf, the students pulled it off beautifully.

This year's theme was "The Sorry Tellers" and the play itself revolved around a group of traveling story tellers from the Land of Sorry who enter a contest held by the king and his court. The silly word play - think puns, bad jokes and toss-offs such as "I like poop!" - is mixed liberally into skits involving grass houses, a Mad Libs-style holiday yarn, three pears who live in porridge and, oh yeah, Darth Vader and his eclectic group of buds.

The glue between the skits are Christmas songs ranging from the precisely beautiful Carol of the Bells to the sentimental Christmas Shoes. Veteran teacher Stan Harris directed the large group of voices to a gloss so shiny I had to remind myself these were high school kids and not a professional group.

Pairing the serious with goofily hilarious makes for an emotional roller coaster ride. But the high schoolers kept us all on board. If the old superstition that mistakes during dress rehearsal mean a perfect performance opening night, those of you with tickets (it's generally sold out) to the dinner theater are in for a treat. Unlike the dress rehearsal folks who sat in pews that made for difficult photo taking, dinner guests are treated to round tables with wide views of the stage area.

For the rest of you, mark your calendar for next year to get tickets. You get a good meal, fun entertainment and support a worthy cause by contributing to music scholarships at PHS.
The singing king and his court

3 comments:

warturtle said...

This is a crappy review the song isn't if Jesus see's momma tonight it's Christmas shoes. We need a real writer to make a review.

~JollyRoger~ said...

@ warturtle...are you basing your opinion on a wrong song title? The people who write these articles are doing it in their own free time. It's a BLOG. You paid nothing to read the words. There's a better way to point out the mistakes and errors of others. For example, your punctuation could use some work.

Melodie Wright said...

Warturtle: Please volunteer to write the next review. We'd love to have you. And when typing in the lyrics to this song, Google came up with If Momma Sees Jesus Tonight. Apologies on the error.