Michael Lee-Murphy 2016-11-22 15:20:55
HIP-HOP HOORAY
Holiday time usually brings a mixed bag of performances of what is perhaps the most famous ballet of all time: The Nutcracker. But have you ever seen the Tchaikovsky masterpiece by way of 1980s Brooklyn? This December, legendary New York MC Kurtis Blow brings The Hip-Hop Nutcracker to the Bushnell in Hartford. The two-hour show features Tchaikovsky’s score, with hip-hop choreography. Check this out for a fresh take on an old classic. Tickets are $19.50-$69.50
THE HIP-HOP NUTCRACKER
DEC. 4 | THE BUSHNELL | HARTFORD
860-497-5600, bushnell.org
the short list
HOLIDAY WONDERLAND
This year’s Festival of Lights begins on Dec. 24, and ends on Jan. 1. Head down to Stamford to meet Judah Maccabee, do some arts and craft s, enter a Lego menorah-building competition and even check out an edible menorah. All types of events are offered at the Chanukah Wonderland at the Chabad of Stamford on Dec. 26-29 from 1-3 p.m. Ten dollars gets any child admission, a drink and a doughnut. Adults are admitted free. chabadstamford.org
GREEN IS GOLD
Fulfill all your Christmas-decorating needs at this year’s Mystic Garden Club Greens Sale. Wreaths, Christmas bouquets, ornaments, tabletop arrangements and bows will all be available. The sale is hosted by the over-90-year-old Mystic Garden Club, founded in 1924 to “stimulate the knowledge and love of gardening, share the advantage of association, promote good environmental stewardship, aid in the protection of native plants and encourage civic planting,” according to the group. This year’s sale will be Dec. 2 from noon-3 p.m. and Dec. 3 from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. at the Mystic Museum of Art. mysticgardenclub.org/greens-sale
CHRISTMASTOWN, CT
Many towns in New England are named for places in the Old World. For the Christmas season, be sure to visit the town that’s named for the place where Christmas itself has its roots. The Bethlehem closer to home transforms itself every year into the Christmas capital of Connecticut. Choral music, a tree lighting, food vendors, horse-drawn hay rides and a visit from Santa Claus himself all feature in this two-day festival scheduled for Dec. 2 from 5-10 p.m. and Dec. 3 from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. christmastownfestival.com
LIVE FROM LONDON’S WEST END
If you are sick of the holiday songs, lights, malls and the madness, catch some absurdist and bleak theater featuring two of the biggest names in contemporary drama: Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. The play, Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land, is broadcast live from the National Theater in London, beamed into several locations around Connecticut. Catch the live performance on Dec. 15 at The Ridgefield Playhouse and at Cinestudio in Hartford. Cinestudio will play an encore on Dec. 17, while the Quick Center for the Arts in Fairfield will play the encore on Jan. 18, and The Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center in Old Saybrook on Jan. 26. ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk
THE STORY’S THE THING
Before there were iPhones, iPads and Xboxes to get children excited during the holidays, there was storytelling. For thousands of years, in fact, people told each other stories for entertainment, especially in the cold months while gathered around a fire. This year, try out this ancient form of entertainment with professional storyteller Tom Lee at Wadsworth Mansion on Dec. 11 at 3 p.m. $10 adults, $5 children ages 6-12. wadsworthmansion.com
See December 2016 calendar listings at connecticutmag.com/calendar
front row
With her signature cat-stroke eyeliner and wild hair out to there, Danbury resident Ronnie Spector, best known as the front person of the ’60s girl group The Ronettes, is still doing it all, at what is her favorite time of year. Besides a new album, the iconic singer is bringing her equally iconic holiday music and show Ronnie Spector’s Best Christmas Party Ever! to Mohegan Sun on Dec. 16.
Tell me about your Christmas show coming up at Mohegan Sun.
Oh, it’s going to be the greatest Christmas party! I’ll wear my sexy Santa outfit. I hand out some gifts, sing some of my Christmas songs and some others by artists like John Lennon and share stories from my own Christmas holidays when I was growing up. You know, my mom was a waitress and was on her feet all day, but she always got us to Macy’s and would stand in line for as long as it took so we could sit on Santa’s lap and tell him what we wanted.
What was the best present you received as a child?
I remember wanting a doll one Christmas. I loved any kind of dolls and my mom told me she couldn’t afford it and I had better tell Santa. I did and on Christmas morning it was there, this rubber kewpie doll with the painted-on curl. I thought it was the best gift ever, and it still is.
What was the best gift as an adult?
A 1969 Camaro. It had white stripes and my initials on it. And it came with a blow-up guy that looked like my ex [the producer and music writer Phil Spector]. He said he included the doll so that no one would mess with me.
So just how much do you like Christmas?
I love Christmas! I start getting excited about it in September. And, of course, I have a tree. A great tree. I would feel naked if I didn’t have a Christmas tree.
Your signature holiday songs on the 1963 Christmas album A Christmas Gift For You include “Sleigh Ride,” “Marshmallow World” and “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.” Do you remember how that album came about?
I think it was my idea and it turned into a collaboration with [Phil Spector], who was Jewish, so I would explain about the decorations and things we kept and put out each year. The album was actually released in 1963. Just as we started to tour to promote it, we were in Dallas as part of Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars tour and President John Kennedy was killed. Dick canceled the tour and it wasn’t until two years later that the album became a hit.
You have something more current going on in music, as well.
My new album, English Heart, goes back to the days when many of the groups that were part of the British Invasion like the Rolling Stones and The Dave Clark Five were opening for me and the Ronettes. We performed a lot over there and there were songs that I wanted to do. My favorites on the new album are “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart” because it reminds me of my late sister [Estelle Bennett], who was part of the group. And I love “I’d Much Rather be With the Girls” because there is nothing like getting together with your girlfriends. The original song was really “I’d Much Rather Be With the Boys,” but we changed it a bit.
You’ve been nicknamed “the first bad girl of rock ’n’ roll.” But you really aren’t bad, are you?
Oh, no! I was so young when I was part of the Ronettes and I don’t think people realize my mother always traveled with us. We were in England when the Beatles were just becoming popular there and John and all of them invited us to go to dinner and nicely asked my mom if she wanted to come, too. She grabbed her purse and came along. I looked like a bad girl; I worked on that, it was not me. As a child, my grandmother watched us in East Harlem while my mother worked and we weren’t allowed outside.
We could only go to the lobby. And I would sit and look out the window watching the Spanish girls with their great eyeliner and the Puerto Rican girls with the attitude and the black girls with cigarettes and think, “That’s what I want to be.” I wanted to look bad and act like I was bad.
I have to ask. What’s the secret to doing that great eyeliner line of yours?
I buy these crayon eyeliners at the drugstore and wet them. I’ve been doing it so long it’s no big deal to me.
What about new projects?
I keep thinking about doing some kind of album of girl group songs. We’ll see.
What is something most people don’t know about you?
I am very shy. [But] on stage I am a pistol. I love it. I love the energy. I have loved singing and performing and I give it my all. But when I am done I am a very different person. I don’t have a lot of close friends. I have a great marriage and am happy to putter around the house and enjoy my family.
| MARYELLEN FILLO |
RONNIE SPECTOR’S BEST CHRISTMAS PARTY EVER!
DEC. 16 | 8 P.M.
THE WOLF DEN AT MOHEGAN SUN (FREE SHOW) | UNCASVILLE
888-226-7711, mohegansun.com
Joy to the World!
THESE HOLIDAY MUSIC PERFORMANCES WILL GET YOU IN THE SPIRIT OF THE SEASON
BY MICHAEL LEE-MURPHY
One of the great joys of the holiday season is listening to the songs you know so well, sung live by a choir. Amid the sales, wrapping paper and squealing children, take a few moments to sit back, listen, reflect and relax. Snuggle into a church pew or an auditorium chair to remember what the holidays are all about. Here are our picks for the best choral music around the state in the month of December.
HANDEL WITH CARE
Handel’s Messiah is perhaps the most famous piece of Christmas music in the world. Nothing captures the joy, excitement and sheer anticipation of the music in this classic. There are plenty of choices to hear the piece performed live. On Dec. 15, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and the Elm City Girls Choir will perform it at Yale’s Woolsey Hall. On Dec. 16, they are at the Sacred Heart University Chapel. On Dec. 17, they’re at the First Congregational Church in Madison, and on Dec. 18 they team up with the Greater Middletown Chorale for a rendition at Middletown High School. If you can’t get enough holiday music, the NHSO is also performing a Holiday Extravaganza on Dec. 10 at Hamden Middle School at 2:30 p.m., and on Dec. 11 at 3 p.m. at Shelton High School. For Handel’s Messiah devotees east of the river, the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra will present its version of the oratorio on Dec. 9 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Norwich, alongside the Norwich Diocesan Choir. Prices vary. newhavensymphony.org, ectsymphony.com, gmchorale.org
A BACH CHRISTMAS
For those on the shoreline, Con Brio takes on Bach’s Christmas Oratorio at Old Lyme’s Christ the King Church on Dec. 9 at 8 p.m., and Dec. 11 at 3 p.m. The piece was first performed in 1734. The program will also feature many well-known favorites, such as God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and I Saw Three Ships. The audience is invited to sing along to certain famous numbers. conbrio.org
A CAPPELLA CAROLS
On Dec. 10, CONCORA — the Connecticut Choral Artists — will sing their favorite Christmas carols at the First Lutheran Church in New Britain at 7 p.m. According to a press release, CONCORA “presents a sleigh-full of these immortal a cappella carol arrangements by Sir David Willcocks, John Rutter, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and others.” The audience is invited to sing along. $10-$55. concora.org
MAGICAL MENDELSSOHN
On Dec. 17 at 8 p.m., Fairfield’s Mendelssohn Choir will take the stage at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Fairfield for its Christmas: The Majesty and the Magic showcase. The choir has been around for more than 30 years, so you know they know what they are doing. The show will feature a festival chorus and plenty of soloists. mendelssohnchoir.com
SONGS IN THE KEY OF SEA
On Dec. 18, Mystic Seaport plays host to the 62nd annual Mystic Community Carol Sing. Led by Ledyard High School Choral Director Jamie Spillane, members of the public are invited to belt out their favorite carol classics into the frosty December air. The old preserved seaport of Mystic provides the perfect setting to get into the holiday spirit. The event starts at the Greenmanville Church at 2 p.m. The caroling then moves outdoors to the McGraw Quadrangle at 3 p.m. mysticseaport.org
Twisted Christmas
‘PRINCE OF PUKE’ JOHN WATERS PUTS THE ‘X’ IN XMAS AT THE RIDGEFIELD PLAYHOUSE
BY FRANK RIZZO
Last July, John Waters was peddling down Commercial Street in Provincetown on the tip of Cape Cod — and thinking of Christmas and “new ways to be bad.”
Specifically, he was gearing up to write the latest edition of his annual holiday stand-up show, A John Waters Christmas, which will take him to the Ridgefield Playhouse on Dec. 19 at 8 p.m.
Christmas is not a holiday that you would automatically associate with the creator of such twisted film classics as Hairspray, Pink Flamingos and Desperate Living.
Halloween, maybe.
“Halloween is one of my least favorite holidays,” he says from his home in Baltimore, the batty burg where most of his works are set.
Waters says he would like to create a few new holidays “because the old favorites have been commercialized to death.
And he would suggest?
“Absent Father’s Day or maybe Dominating Mother’s Day, or how about Tooth Fairy Day — which would have the oldest old-school queen in each neighborhood sitting in the mall, and when your kid’s tooth is about to fall out, you take the kid there where the fairy gives you a new hairdo.”
But Waters still has a semi-fondness for the yule season.
The filmmaker, author and bon mot guest says his first Christmas memory is when he asked his parents for a hand puppet “and the album entitled The Genius of Ray Charles. I have to give myself some credit on that one and I liked the fact that my parents actually got it for me.”
And what did little John Waters make of Santa?
“I could tell that the man who played Santa every year was the man next door because he was not a very good actor. I thought, ‘This was just a bald-faced lie’ and I became skeptical of everything after that.”
All in all, Christmas was a very confusing time for a lad like Waters.
“Who was Santa and did he have something to do with the Easter Bunny. Was he Satan? My guardian angel? Is Rudolph part of the Holy Trinity? I would get it all mixed up in my mind — on purpose.”
Has John Waters ever re-gifted?
“You never fool anyone and people think, ‘You cheap bastard’ — but yes, I have. I get a lot of good gifts that people send me because they want quotes from books and stuff so … but I try not to. I think no gift is better.”
He doesn’t encourage gifts from fans but he has one that he holds dear. “It’s sort of a Christmas sculpture of [drag actor] Divine knocking over the Christmas tree with the lights blinking. That goes on the table every year and has become a family heirloom.”
For holiday atmosphere, Waters prefers obscure Christmas music, and has even compiled a holiday album. His favorite song on the recording is Fat Daddy (Is Santa Claus) by jive-talking Baltimore black DJ Fat Daddy. Fat Daddy hosted the monthly “Negro Day” on the local segregated television dance program of the ’50s and ’60s, The Buddy Deane Show, which was the inspiration for The Corny Collins Show in Hairspray.
Waters’ crossover 1988 hit film Hairspray — and his subsequent fortunes — were super-sized when the film was made into a Broadway smash musical in 2002, a successful tour, a regional theater staple and a 2007 movie musical starring John Travolta in drag. This month NBC presents a live version of the show Dec. 7 at 8 p.m.
“Excited? Are you kidding?” he says. “Another version! Next is Hairspray in Space!’”
He says he had a development deal with HBO for a Hairspray sequel “but it didn’t get picked up, but if this [NBC] version is a hit, who knows? You never know what’s going to happen.”
It could be Christmas all over again.
recreation
The Need for Speed
ON TRACK KARTING IN WALLINGFORD OFFERS WHITE-KNUCKLE THRILLS
BY MICHAEL LEE-MURPHY
There aren’t many quintessentially American, immersive roadside activities anymore, the kind that used to litter the roadways of pre-internet life. People are bowling and mini-golfing less, and the drive-in movie is almost as rare as a Connecticut mountain lion (there have been a few reported sightings). Personal technology now takes up the time we used to spend on these things.
Inside a hulking warehouse in the back of a Route 5 parking lot in Wallingford, however, you can still find a true American roadside experience, in the truest sense of the word: go-karting. You first notice the drone of engines and the sweet smell of gasoline. These are the sounds and smells of speed. On Track Karting has been selling some of the most visceral thrills available for some 10 years now, first at their Wallingford location, and more recently at a second track in Brookfield.
A required waiver form, an instructional video, a helmet and a neck brace all attest to the seriousness of the endeavor: this is not bumper cars. The adult karts hit a top speed of about 40 mph, and the helmet and neck brace are there for a reason, as the handling in the karts feels closer to a fighter jet than any regular car. The sensitive steering mixes with the delicate interplay of gas, brake, gas. The hands, feet and eyes work to conduct a symphony of speed.
The track has sophisticated timing equipment that measures how fast you go around the track, and a large screen records each lap time down to the hundredth of a second. The idea here is that you are racing for pure speed, not for position on the track. If you come up behind a kart and driver who is slower than you, trackside assistants produce a flag to indicate that the slower kart should move aside. Your correspondent can confirm this flag was deployed for another Connecticut Magazine employee, who will remain unnamed, allowing yours truly to speed through to karting glory. Indeed, if you are looking for bragging rights, On Track will give you a printout after your race showing lap times. If you can clear a particular time around the track, racers can qualify to get into a higher class of faster karts. The truly obsessed can enter leagues to race against the best around.
Some of the best racers in America have even stopped by. According to Wallingford general manager Taylor Bossie, Middletown NASCAR great Joey Logano has even tried his hand at the track. Connecticut’s Ryan Preece was an On Track regular before exploding onto the NASCAR scene in the past few years. On Track also has junior karts for racers ages 7 to 14, and even an outdoor track with small, battery-powered Kiddie Karts for speedsters under 7.
A single track credit is $20. Credits get cheaper the more you buy: three or more are $18 each, 10 or more are $17 each, 20 or more are $16 each and 50 or more are $13 each.
After you come off the track, you may want to give yourself a few minutes to let your nerves settle. A full 10 minutes after finishing a race in Wallingford this fall, my hands were still shaking. After ripping around the track in a go-kart, driving a normal car felt like handling a boat.
Published by New Haven Register formerly 21st Century Media Newspapers . View All Articles.
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