{"id":244052,"date":"2010-12-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-13T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/theatre-review-how-the-grinch-stole-christmas\/"},"modified":"2010-12-13T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-12-13T08:00:00","slug":"theatre-review-how-the-grinch-stole-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/theatre-review-how-the-grinch-stole-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Theatre Review: ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Patricia Morris Buckley |\u00a0SDUN Theatre Critic<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Theatre<\/a>
This years Old Globe production of "Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas" features Jeff Skowron (right) as the Grinch and Logan Lipton (left) as Max the dog. (Courtesy Michael Lamont)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now an honored holiday tradition after 13 years, \u201cDr. Seuss\u2019 How the Grinch Stole Christmas\u201d is a musical staging of the 1966 animated cartoon (not the miserable 2000 live film with Jim Carrey). It features two of the songs from the TV version, \u201cYou\u2019re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch\u201d (in an audience participation moment that\u2019s one of the show\u2019s highlights) and \u201cWelcome, Christmas (Fah Who Doraze).\u201d<\/p>\n

The rest of the music was written by Timothy Mason and Mel Marvin, although none of it is as memorable as the 1966 songs. The show runs a kid-friendly 90 minutes (with no intermission), which is 60 minutes longer than the original. New songs and dance scenes fill up some of that time, but beefing up the script itself are two different versions of Max the dog sharing the stage.<\/p>\n

The older Max tells us the story of how he\u2019s leaving Whoville (he never really says why or where he\u2019s going) and remembers his first Christmas as the green-tinged Grinch\u2019s pet. While Martin\u00a0Van Treuren is wonderful as the older pooch, it\u2019s Logan Lipton\u2019s charm, enthusiasm and doggy-like mannerisms that are the heart of this show. This is Lipton\u2019s third year in the role and already his performance is aged to perfection.<\/p>\n

One delightful moment is when the two sing a duet, \u201cThis Time of Year,\u201d and harmonize with canine cuteness.<\/p>\n

To make the story flow as the Grinch tries to steal Christmas from the ever-upbeat Whos, there are a few theatrical tricks employed. Puppets sometimes play characters seen from a distance and a wonderful scene of the Grinch and Max riding over the mountains gets a little stage magic as well.<\/p>\n

Many familiar faces are back in the Whoville cast, including San Diego favorites Steve Gunderson, Melinda Gilb and Eileen Bowman. Sharing the role of cuteness-personified as Cindy-Lou Who are newcomer Remy Margaret Corbin and veteran Shea Starrs Siben. First grader Corbin tackled the part opening night and while Siben (who played the part opening night last year) has a stronger voice, Corbin is beyond charming and acts the stuffing out of this non-turkey of a role.<\/p>\n

As mentioned before, Skowron\u2019s Grinch has a lot more humor this year. That doesn\u2019t mean that the Grinch has lost his bite, oh no. But we also giggle with him here and there, which gives the show much more holiday spirit.<\/p>\n

Director James Vasquez, in recreating Jack O\u2019Brien\u2019s original staging, imbues the whole show with a rousing Christmas carol soul. Throw in snow in several scenes and you have a holly, jolly good time that\u2019s worth revisiting year after year.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Patricia Morris Buckley |\u00a0SDUN Theatre Critic Now an honored holiday tradition after 13 years, \u201cDr. Seuss\u2019 How the Grinch Stole Christmas\u201d is a musical staging of the 1966 animated cartoon (not the miserable 2000 live film with Jim Carrey). It features two of the songs from the TV version, \u201cYou\u2019re a Mean One, Mr. […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1295,"featured_media":244053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Theatre Review: 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas'","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1295"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}