Radio City show is a spectacular sight

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Nov 11, 2004 by Hillel Italie Associated Press

NEW YORK -- The temperature topped 60 degrees last weekend in New York, Halloween candy was still unfinished and planning for Thanksgiving had barely begun.

But in midtown Manhattan, the calendar rushed to December like a sleigh on ice with the opening of the 72nd annual Radio City "Christmas Spectacular."

Families in light coats and even short sleeves sat under the wintery, make-believe stars that twinkled from the Radio City Music Hall's make-believe sky. Week-old memories of ghosts and witches dissolved into visions of sugarplum fairies and dancing Santas; the locked-in smiles and angular, click-click kicks of the Rockettes and the crisp, blizzard-white pants of the wooden soldiers.

The "Spectacular" runs through Jan. 2, a busy and consuming production, with officials estimating that 2,500 tons of snow will fall on the stage, 14,096 AA batteries will run dry to power the performers' wireless microphones, 90,000 buckets of packaged popcorn will be sold to patrons and 560 loaves of 7-grain bread be eaten by the hungry herd of animals featured in the nativity scene.

As much an institution as the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Plaza, the show has evolved over the past few years. Directed and choreographed by John Dietrich, the "Spectacular" includes such standards as "The Nutcracker" medley and "The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers," but also features a 3-D tour of New York and a video montage of weather forecasters making the call for Christmas Day.

The show runs 90 minutes, brisk and chipper much of the way, but darkening at the end for the traditional "First Nativity." That's when big-band swing fades into a solemn dirge and the meaning of Christmas shifts from Santa Claus to "One Solitary Life," when a scrim reminds audience members -- young and old, Christian and non- Christian -- that Jesus Christ "was nailed to a cross between thieves."

Whether awed or dazed, the crowd clapped as the lights went up, but it did not stand.