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The NOLA Holiday Theatre Wrap Up.

Tis absolutely the season to have been seeing theatre in New Orleans.

The month of December had many amazing things to offer to people in town for the holidays.
Over at the newest venue in town, Mid City Theatre, run by Mr. Fred Nuccio, they had two holiday shows to offer.  A.J. Allegra had brought back his perennial favorite, The Santaland Diaries.  Allegra had done the show once already at the now, unfortunately, closed Le Chat Noir.
Mid City was also hosting The Eight: The Reindeer Monologues starring Spud McConnell.  For anyone who frequents theatre in New Orleans, Allegra as a Sedaris-ian Elf and Spud as a reindeer, that’s pretty much theatrical gold.

The Skin Horse people were busy putting up their fantastic, I’m pretty sure sold out production of an original show called Sarah, which took place in the living room of a house in the Bywater.  The house could only sit about twenty people, so this made the show one of the hottest, hardest to get tickets in town.  The show was about a woman slowly losing it in front of everyone, and it was scary and creepy and haunting.  All the things you want in a good holiday show.

Southern Rep was hosting Ricky Graham and company for their production of The Pecan Cracker.  Take everything you know about the ballet, and make it funny.  Ricky, Sean Patterson and Mandy Zirchenbach wrote the script, and Jefferson Turner did all the music for this incredibly original musical. Also a sold out run.

And lastly, over at the Museum of Art, The Nola Project was producing that old holiday chestnut, Romeo and Juliet.  Ok, so maybe sword fighting and teen suicide isn’t the best message to be sending over the holidays, but they had Christmas decorations all over the museum. So there’s that. This show’s run was also completely sold out.

So what we’ve learned from all this amazing, sold out theatre?

Clearly, New Orleanians have to be inside when the weather gets this cold, and there are only so many movies about Tyler Perry that they can sit through.

AND theatre production is booming. And that’s a gift for all of us.