Holiday Inn (Biddeford City Theater, December 6th - 22nd, 2024)

I love living just one block away from the beautiful City Theater in downtown Biddeford, Maine, which runs five excellent shows per season. This year, their Christmas production is Irving Berlin’s musical Holiday Inn, a stage adaptation of the 1942 film that opened on Broadway back in 2016. Directed by Linda Sturdivant, City Theater’s staging of the musical is a spirited celebration of the holiday season, and of all holiday seasons for that matter, given that the songs are basically a revue of our various holidays themselves. The cast members all ably attend to their roles and to the demanding song & dance routines throughout the performance, the most famous of which is “White Christmas.” It’s remained a Christmastime mainstay in American culture for over 80 years now, although our white Christmases have become less reliable and more nostalgic in the face of climate change, even as far north as Maine. I’ve often wondered whether that song will someday be merely a mirage-like fantasy of our culture’s memory of our once-snowy winters. Fortunately, snow did return to Maine this weekend and covered the ground and the rooftops just hours after I went to watch Holiday Inn at City Theater!

Key players in the production include the magnetic Keating Babcock as the Las Vegas & then Hollywood-bound Ted Hanover, Kathryn Kellogg as his longtime sidekick Lila Dixon, and Derek Kingsley as Lila’s soon-to-be fiancé Jim Hardy. The three characters perform as a trio at a club in New York City (“Steppin’ out with My Baby”), until Jim decides to purchase a farm with a fixer-upper farmhouse in Connecticut, determined to raise a family there with Lila. However, Lila and Ted instead decide to embark on a six-week tour together as a duo, and Lila eventually breaks off her engagement to Jim. With the help of his friends and fellow farm-dwellers Linda Mason (Colleen Katana) and Louise Badger (Jennine Cannizzo), Jim enjoys his move to the farm full-time and works hard to keep it all afloat; his number “Blue Skies” is perhaps the second best-known song from the musical, and Derek Kingsley’s warm and commanding vocals carry it along quite memorably.

At the center of the narrative framework of these innocuously criss-crossing relationships is the titular inn that’s opened by Jim and Louise, one where they invite guests to stay over only for the big holidays such as New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day, Easter Sunday, and Independence Day. Jim composes songs to be performed at the inn on all of these holidays, such as “Cheek to Cheek” and “Easter Parade,” a set of numbers that forms the arc of most of the rest of the show. Sean Farrelly’s efficient yet evocative set design lends flexibility to all of these seasonal changes, along with the show’s orchestra housed right on stage in a windowed, patio-like structure. I also loved Darnell Stuart’s perfectly designed costumes for the successive holiday sequences, especially the white & red sailor uniforms that the characters dance in together for the 4^th of July sequence, which amply showcases the talents of the Holiday Inn dancers, who all show such dedication and sure footwork throughout the performance. I highly recommend a visit to our local opera house here in Biddeford during this festive holiday season, as well as many happy returns for City Theater’s upcoming shows, all of which are finely crafted to appeal to the entire community.

Holiday Inn is currently running on weekends through December 22^nd at the superb City Theater in downtown Biddeford, Maine. To book your tickets, please visit: citytheater.org