Last week we gave you eight holiday-show reviews; here are eight more—including some for Hanukkah—with still more bounty to come. —Tony Adler
The Christmas Schooner John Reeger and the late Julie Shannon, creators of this facile, treacly Christmas musical, implant a purportedly rhetorical question at its center: Why would Michigan sea captain Peter Stossel risk his life sailing his schooner laden with Christmas trees 300 miles to Chicago across a stormy November Lake Michigan in 1882 just so that others “can know the joy of Christmas?” Here’s my answer. Stossel, singled out in the show as an astute businessman, chops down 2,500 trees without paying for them, then sells them for 50 cents a pop. He and a skeleton crew score $1,250—roughly $30,000 in 2016 dollars—for five weeks of work. Profit is a singular motivator, especially when you can mask it behind Jesus and tradition. Bring the whole family! —Justin Hayford
Yuletide Genocide This questionably named holiday version of Stage 773’s biannual one-act festival features ten-minute alternate takes on classic holiday stories from six local theater companies: Stage 773, Indie Boots, New American Folk Theatre, the Right Brain Project, Reutan Collective, and Hobo Junction Productions. Kicking off the evening with the strongest piece is host Stage 773, presenting The Gift of the Magi. After Della comes home with her horrendous haircut, excited to give Jim a chain for his prized pocket watch, we find out that Jim sold off his most prized possession—not his watch, actually his penis—to buy her combs. Indie Boots’ Little Women-based same-sex love story is a little too sweet surrounded by generally unimpressive perversity, though Anthony Whitaker is enjoyably dry in New American’s It’s a Holiday, Charlie Brown. —Marissa Oberlander
