Thank you to the management of Fontanel who was kind enough to invite FOCUS to enjoy their Christmas dinner show called UNWRAP THE SONGS OF CHRISTMAS. This showstars hit songwriters,Will Robinson and James Dean Hicks, which is running up until December 23rd.
We really enjoyed the delicious meal and the setting was really nice inside their Studio Gallery with a stage set up festively for the holiday show.
Overall, I wasn’t blown away by the show. I guess I was expecting something a little different since the last show that I enjoyed there was MUSIC CITY ON STAGE. That was a fun show that was like a Broadway review featuring a cast of singers, which reminded me of shows from Opryland Themepark in years past. This was a more scaled down, simplified show that reminded me of having dinner at the Bluebird Cafe, which is never bad. That type of songwriter show is just more casual and I expected that this might be something a little bigger. However, it’s hard to make any Christmas show fresh. Christmas songs have been done over and over again for years. So, I think the attempt was to try something fresh with a scaled back, songwriters night version. Don’t get me wrong, it was nice, I just wasn’t wowed by the show. No points where I was truly impressed, but I did enjoy the song about World War 2 on Christmas and the Cajun song was a fun touch. Plus, I enjoyed hearing a few bars of some of their hit songs near the end of the evening.
Now, I did appreciate the nice courtesy that James Dean Hicks did by having his 80 year old father to join him on the stage, but he couldn’t sing well, sang 2 songs, wiped his nose on stage, and then interrupted the show afterwards 2-3 times during the course of the evening. To be honest, it started to get annoying and disrupted the whole flow of things, but that’s just my opinion. It was cute at first, if he had been limited to just one song, but then he continued on for another one and I didn’t really need to hear about snot at dinner. I understand he was trying to be accommodating to his elderly father in one of the last shows of the run, however, I wouldn’t invite my mom up to sing who is just short of 80 since she can’t really sing (me, either, if you want to know the truth). If he could sing really well, that would be different. Customers had paid to enjoy a more professional show.
I didn’t witness the audience being particularly moved doing the show and there was no standing ovation at the end. There was no talk that I overheard from anyone being overly-impressed. It was nice, but not great.
Rated 3 out of 5 stars.
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