Review | ‘A Magical Cirque Christmas’ at Santa Barbara’s Granada
It’s Hard to Resist the Seasonal Spirit and Holiday Fun for All Ages
The plot of the holiday-themed variety show A Magical Cirque Christmas revolves around a quest to help the Guardian of Time get into the holiday spirit and unleash the changing of the seasons with his giant magical clock. As the action begins, he’s not really feeling the festive spirit, but by the time this charming variety show on steroids ended, not only was the Guardian of Time feeling merry, but so were all of us in the audience.
A large part of the charm of this music-, magic-, and comedy-infused cirque show is due to the captivating Carisa Hendrix, who stars as Lucy Darling, the mistress of ceremonies and one of the main characters. (Read my preview interview with her here.) “Why such a sad face?” she asks the Guardian of Time. “You look like you just bought Twitter or something.” And so our time-travel adventure begins.
A Magical Cirque Christmas is definitely designed for audiences of all ages, and it was fun to see multiple generations enjoying something together. The circus artists included a Lyra hoop acrobat, trapeze performers, jugglers, a gyroscope acrobat, a Rolla Bolla performer, a unicyclist, and my personal favorites who performed bicycle tricks and incredible feats with skateboards stacked five high on top of a tall trampoline.
