Holiday Vaudeville

I dragged Andrew to the Kennedy Center this evening for the free Millenium Stage Holiday Vaudeville performance.

Upon arriving, we were given a small paper bag containing a kazoo and wrapped mint. We were told that everything would be used during the show, so we weren’t to get rid of any of it (like tossing the mint’s wrapper).

There were four performers/groups during the one-hour show. The host/emcee was Sean Grissom, a cajun cellist. He performed a few songs between the other acts, including a piece off of his “Celtic Cello” CD which Andrew bought.
Grissom called up Artis the Spoonman first. The Spoonman plays, as you might suspect, spoons. Ordinary spoons.

Next Grissom led the audience in an unforgettable rendition of “The Little Drummer Boy” (or, as he called it, “The Little Cellist Boy”). Here is where we used our candy wrappers, creating the rhythm. However, I must say that we sucked. I had lots of trouble keeping the rhythm, and usually I’m not too bad at that. You can imagine the rest of the audience.

Then Grissom brought up AJ Silver, who does trick roping and whips. Next Grissom lead the audience in “Jingle Bells” on our kazoos. I got the hang of it about halfway through.

Finally the Alexandria Kleztet. The big finale was “Auld Lang Syne” with the audience on kazoos again. At the end we did a mock New Years Eve with a count down, and the audience popping the paper bags at zero.

A very fun show! Almost all of the performances at the Millenium Stage are simulcast on the Internet and archived, so you can watch it if you dare.

Afterwards, we walked out on the terrace overlooking the Potomac.