Considering they’re celebrating their 85th anniversary, the Rockettes are looking pretty spectacular. The leggy, high-kicking chorines are the undisputed stars of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, which is once again filling the halls of the venerable theater with delighted throngs.
This year’s edition has added a new fashion show dedicated to Rockette costumes through the decades, to the sparkly updated version — conceived, directed and choreographed by Linda Haberman — that was unveiled several years ago.
But there can perhaps be such a thing as too much tinkering. While the earlier retooling brought a renewed freshness and vitality to the proceedings — mainly due to a greater concentration on the wonder that is the Rockettes and a healthy dose of state-of-the-art technology — it also features elements that induce something less than holiday cheer.
Chief among them is a lengthy segment in which a mother and her young daughter visit a department-store Santa in search of a sold-out toy. They wind up at his North Pole workshop, where they find themselves immersed in “Santa’s Video Game,” featuring plenty of fancy 3-D visual effects (it’s amusing to see some audience members donning their 3-D glasses at the show’s beginning, apparently not realizing that the performers are themselves three-dimensional). Clearly designed to pander to young video-game addicts, it doesn’t fit well alongside such classics as “The Nutcracker” and “The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers,” let alone “The Living Nativity.”
Fortunately, those classic set pieces are still very much on display, as are more recent and entertaining segments such as “New York at Christmas,” in which the Rockettes take a bus tour of a Manhattan decked out for the holidays; “Santa Flies to New York,” a dizzying 3-D animated film marred only by its egregious product placements; and “Let Christmas Shine,” in which the dancers are dressed in gorgeous crystal costumes.
And let’s face it — it’s the Rockettes that everyone is there to see. When the ladies in that magnificent chorus line kick up their heels in impossibly precise formation, one gets the feeling, if only briefly, that everything is right with the world.