Review: “A Very Electric Christmas” Dazzles The Eye But The Story…Not So Much

A Very Electric Christmas
Seattle Children’s Theatre (for tickets)
Through December 31, 2023

Seattle Children’s Theatre has brought an intriguing performance company to town that everyone from 3 (ish) to 93 will enjoy. Lightwire Theater has developed a “light show” that is tourable without a lot of encumbering technology: Dancers who wear neon-style tubing costumes that they can control themselves with battery packs! The battery packs allow them to not have to rely on a whole elaborate computerized performance. There are a lot of background visuals, though, that are controlled in the booth.

Lightwire (www.lightwiretheater.com) was a semi-finalist on America’s Got Talent in Season 7, and I remember them! But that was only three minutes of performance and storytelling, and they’ve come to Seattle with A Very Electric Christmas which is claimed to be 60 minutes but was closer to 70 when I saw it.

Their artistry in performance is quite excellent. The “costumes” of lighted characters are colorful and riveting, especially to the smaller audience members. Virtually everything has background music, and the choices for this production were generally delightful.

The entire production is a lighted up story in the dark. It’s almost impossible to see the dancers who wear the lights. The basic story is about a bird family with a young bird the company named “Max.” Of course in the dark, with no information, the bird is really nameless. But it’s about how “he” and his parents begin to fly and the baby bird gets blown off course, to the North Pole.

At the North Pole, the bird sees dancing poinsettias (though these flowers don’t quite look like a specific flower), and worms who “carol.” It’s a bit difficult to know if one would apply the emotion of fear to him, as he interacts with these puppets, because he’s separated from his parents. He seems intrigued, basically.

The description of the show, however, does not give the full picture of what Lightwire decided was an appropriate story for Max’s journey. It turns out that it’s really a take-off, weirdly, of The Nutcracker. The beginning of the show is several Nutcracker Soldiers dancing around a bit. That’s fine, though it is only later that one realizes why they are there. After the soldiers, there are some (very large) mice.

Then we get to the story of Max and his family. Somehow, after Max is separated from his parents in the North Pole, these mice “hear” about him (there are lighted up telephone handles they use) when the radio announcer tells them about a missing baby bird, and they go capture him and take him to the Mouse King, who is clearly evil and wants to put Max in a very small birdcage.

That’s when the soldiers come in because they have a sword fight with the Mouse King and kill him. And then, somehow, Max is brought back to his parents and everything is all better.

Here’s the thing – the light show is definitely entrancing and a great idea. It’s short enough that even very small children can manage it. I brought my three-year-old granddaughter and while she did well, she got scared of the scary music and scary Mouse King and sat on her parents’ laps. There were Dozens of Very Small Children. I mean from 3 months to 1 ½ years and 2 years old. There wasn’t any crying that I heard, so it seemed to be ok for them to watch.

But the story is misguided. Sure, The Nutcracker is a Christmas tradition. But the story of a small bird being separated from his parents and needing to get back to them somehow is enough of a story. In this show, the parents were oddly enormously passive and they go on the internet to “look for” their child, and give up and go back home. If the story were shortened to just their search and Max’s amazing experiences apart from them, with a happy ending, that would have been fine.

In fact, the mouse sequences were quite long, their interactions with the Mouse King were confusing and clearly scary, and the fight with the soldiers was endless (not to mention the death at the end). The show could have been a great show at… 45 minutes? Without any of the Nutcracker reference material. Without scaring the tiny kids who inevitably were going to be brought by their parents, who are likely seeking holiday entertainment for their littles.

I still liked the experience, and I enjoyed that at the end of the show the actors took off their costumes and showed the children that it was all make-believe. If you’re reading this wondering if you should take your family, I think it’s generally worth it, and now you at least know what you’re in for. I think the media descriptions of this production should really be more informative.

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