Tired of ads? Subscribers enjoy a distraction-free reading experience.
Click here to subscribe today or Login.

This space is used periodically to tout local entertainment options, but there is unlikely a time of year when they are so abundant. Along with the lure of TV specials, blockbuster movies at the multiplexes (and the pressure to spend on gifts and decorations), consider the alternative of a play, concert or special movie presentation.

It’s already too late to take in the clever live adaptation of the iconic TV special “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,” which played last week at the F.M. Kirby Center. And you missed the more intimate and atypical but no less engaging concert by the Arcadia Chorale performed at St. Nicholas Church in Wilkes-Barre last weekend. But the joy of this season is that it never stops giving.

Note that this is not an exhaustive list.

Little Theatre of Wilkes-Barre is putting on A Christmas Carol through Dec. 15. Music Box Theatre in Swoyersville is offering Harry Connick Jr.’s The Happy Elf through Dec. 15. And there’s still time to catch Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley at the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble through Dec. 29.

That last one may merit a brief explanation: It’s an unofficial sequel to Jane Austen’s “Pride & Prejudice,” and strives quite well to mimic the wit, warmth and women-empowerment of the original novel, with an emphatic Christmas twist.

The Degnan Ballet Center at the Conservatory at Wilkes University will present its annual Nutcracker at the Dorothy Dickson Darte Center on campus this weekend, Dec. 13, 14 and 15, while Moscow Ballet’s variation on the dance, the Great Russian Nutcracker, will be performed at the F.M. Kirby Center for the Performing Arts Dec. 17.

Speaking of the Kirby Center, if you are reading this early enough on Thursday, there’s still time to catch Elf on the Shelf: A Christmas Musical at 6 p.m. Dec. 12. And you have two chances to see Frank Capra’s classic film “It’s a Wonderful Life” on the Kirby’s large screen Dec. 20 with a matinee at 1 p.m. and an evening viewing at 7:30 p.m.

Oh, and there’s the free Holiday movie event sponsored by HKQ Law this Saturday at 2 p.m., Disney’s The Lion King. Not exactly a holiday film, but you can’t beat the price if you have children under 12, and they get a pre-show juggler, the Cabaret Carolers and Tux the Penguin as a bonus.

For the musically inclined, Shavertown United Methodist Church hosts Carols By Candlelight Dec. 15 at 7 p.m.; First United Methodist Church of Shickshinny will hold its 14th annual Service of Lessons and Carols Dec. 15 at 6 p.m., and St. Benedict’s Church in Wilkes-Barre will have the a capella singing of the Wyoming Valley Harmony Chorus’s “Holidays, Holly and Harmony” concert Dec. 15 at 2 p.m.

Lastly, at least for this list of suggestions, is something different. Gaslight Theatre’s newest installment in its single-room series of plays runs through Dec. 21 in King’s College Theatre. This year’s original one-acts are set in the living room, titled “Home for the Holidays.” And unless someone changes their minds, it is to be Gaslight’s last in the Playroom series.

— Times Leader

https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/web1_web1_play.room1_.jpg.optimal.jpg