Festive fun for all that captures the spirit
of an Irish Christmas
A theatre trip at Christmas is a classic family tradition and A Fairytale for Christmas is a wonderful remedy to the mundanity of the family panto trip. With the theme of an Irish Christmas concert, you know you’re in for a fun evening. The show mixes the usual jolly Christmas classics with the impressive addition of river dancing and traditional Irish singalongs. The mixture of all of these songs and dances gives a delightful, if slightly uncoordinated, concert that will appeal to those wanting to get into the festive spirit.
With a small set of instrumentalists, singers and a team of six dancers, the cast of this performance lit up the stage of the Dominion Theatre. The dancing was fantastic from the small dance troop. They demonstrated a range of dance; plenty of skilled river dancing to keep to the theme of the performance, with flamenco and modern stylings added in. The various leaps and twirls combined with the glittery costumes put everyone in the Christmas spirit. At certain times it seemed to lack polish, but often this could be attributed to the informality of the performance. A little more engagement with this informality may have added to the authenticity of the show.
The instrumentalists were also very talented. The ability of the guitarist, banjo player and violinist to dance around the stage whilst playing was highly skilled. In particular, the violinist captured the spirit and energy of an Irish Christmas that you would expect to find in the pubs of Dublin. Given the size of the performance, it was understandable that it would be difficult to have many more instrumentalists on stage, however, the slightly commercialised backing track did detract from the authenticity of the performance. A piano and a percussionist would have given further depth to the performance which slightly lacked due to the backing track creating a less professional output.
The show also would have benefitted from a bit more of an introduction. The first quarter of the show felt that it lacked energy and didn’t fully engage the audience. Whilst the mixture of upbeat songs and the classic quieter songs such as Silent Night and O Holy Night gave the performance variety to keep the audience interested, a better balance could have been achieved to grab the attention from the start. In particular, a theme or story could have been more intentionally highlighted to take the audience on a journey, rather than having a presentation of a seemingly random music and dance. The energy levels were improved from the start of the second half and the audience engagement was further reaching meaning the final sing and dance along numbers landed better than earlier in the show. Thanks to the engaged nature of the final numbers, the audience were left with a buzzy, festive feeling worthy of the talent displayed on the stage.