THROUGH 12/17: Careful Christmas Connections: NC Theatre’s Elf and Theatre Raleigh’s The 1940s RADIO HOUR
A snow globe in a theater? A theater in a snow globe? The crafty – and strategically minimal – set that placed North Carolina Theatre‘s kicky, caffeinated production of Elf – The Musical within a gold-plaqued bubble wasn’t the only element that foregrounded the show’s size and proportions as the opening show of the company’s 2023-2024 season. Its staging in the relatively intimate confines of Fletcher Opera Theater (while Theatre in the Park‘s annual stand of A Christmas Carol held the mainstage at Raleigh Memorial Auditorium, next door) also spoke of an organization still struggling to find new norms and rightsize its operations in the wake of an economic upheaval brought on by the COVID pandemic that has threatened theatre companies, small and large, across the country.
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