A number of kids in the audience nearly stole the Pops Live! "Swingin' Holiday Extravaganza" show from the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, conductor Philip Mann, and guest Broadway singers Destan Owens and Mandy Gonzalez on Friday night at Pulaski Academy's Connor Performing Arts Center in Little Rock.
A well-dressed young man danced up a storm down house right during some of the program's uptempo numbers. And when Gonzalez asked for a handful of youngsters to help her choreograph Jerry Herman's "We Need A Little Christmas," she got, and was nearly upstaged by, nearly three dozen.
Gonzalez (Wicked) and Owens (Chicago), both pops-concert returnees, nonetheless got their moments in the spotlight, particularly in their duet setting of Clement Moore's "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" and their delightful, spiteful follow-up accounting for the gifts in Frederick Silver's "The 12 Days After Christmas." They proved also to be a good pairing, singing- and acting-wise, in Frank Loesser's "Baby, It's Cold Outside" and in the finale, David Foster and Carole Bayer Sager's "The Prayer."
Solo, Owens excelled in a sentimental singing of "I'll Be Home for Christmas." And, while I would have preferred a somewhat less militant arrangement, Gonzalez brought the house down, and then up, in Adolphe Adam's "O Holy Night."
Stellar orchestral moments included a suite from the movie The Polar Express; music from How the Grinch Stole Christmas (cartoon, not Carrey); a dashing, quick-tempo version of Leroy Anderson's "Sleigh Ride;" and especially the four segments of the Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn version of P.I. Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite.
Owens, Gonzalez, orchestra and Mann, but likely different kids, will rejingle all the bells and some of the whistles at 7:30 p.m. today and 3 p.m. Sunday at the arts center, 12701 Hinson Road, Little Rock. Ticket information is available by calling (501) 666-1761 or online at ArkansasSymphony.org.
Metro on 12/20/2014