We’re still hunting for Halloween candy between the couch cushions and have yet to order a turkey — but “The Radio City Christmas Spectacular” just propelled us into the holidays.
The latest edition comes with even more elaborate and immersive video projections, plus a new number, “Snow,” in which free-floating, giant plastic “snowflakes” hover over the audience.
No matter: The Rockettes are still the stars of this spectacular, and for good reason. The leggy chorines’ dancing and choreography are better than ever, whether they’re thigh to thigh in the classic “The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers,” which never fails to provoke gasps, or in newer numbers like the opening “Sleigh Ride,” in which they play Santa’s reindeer. And they look terrific in their gloriously glitzy, sexy costumes.
Not that everything new is improved. “Santa’s Video Game,” with its elaborate 3-D animated film, panders to kids obsessed with interactive entertainment, and we’d gladly lose the elf who tells a harried mother to let her daughter tweet only on weekends. And there are so many product placements for one particular bank that we expect the Three Wise Men to hit an ATM on their way to Bethlehem.
Still, such staples as “The Nutcracker” and the beautifully staged “The Living Nativity,” with its live animals, are as wondrous as ever. And “Snow” has the Rockettes dancing in a new, more fluid and sinuous style than usual.
It bodes well for “Hearts and Lights,” the new live production coming to Radio City in March, which gushingly promises “the Rockettes like you’ve never seen them before!” Spring can’t come too soon, but at least, for now, we have the wonderful Wooden Soldiers.