On Ice

(Image courtesy of the St. Regis)

Ice skating may be the closest adult women (and some enlightened men) can get to indulging their floaty ballerina visions in a public space. Which makes the ultra fancy-pants St. Regis Astor Holiday Rink all the better for stoking that element of socially-sanctioned fantasy. I have skated at a number of other dreamy ice rinks including above the footings of the Eiffel Tower last Christmas where Radiohead played and the skates were free in deference to the season. Also memorable was the iconic, epic Rockefeller Center rink where rink-envoys were on hand to inquire about your pain factor when an especially dramatic fall happens. And the Astor Rink has its own unique appeal.

Teenage Dream

In Young Adult, Charlize Theron doesn’t want to grow up

by Felicia Feaster


With the double-whammy combination of Bridesmaids and Young Adult, 2011 is officially the year of the stunted, frustrated girl-misfit. A toxic spin on all of those cutesy chick flicks where career girls yearn for marriage, the latter film is the convention-busting story of semi-slovenly, semi-slatternly 37-year-old Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron), who is hellbent on busting up a marriage. Mavis is a woman old enough — the social code goes — to be married and the proud owner of a child (or two). But instead she's floundering in a sea of insecurity when it comes to both love and career. It is an outrageously refreshing change of pace from the priss-pots and put-a-ring-on-it obsessives who constitute the majority of romantic comedies.

In a deliciously terse opening sequence, Mavis is introduced waking up in her cluttered Minneapolis high-rise apartment — more dorm room than grown-up pad — in a hungover funk that you sense she's been riding for a long time. A post-divorce bachelorette, Mavis drinks too much, guzzles Diet Coke for breakfast, and semi-neglects her baby substitute: a fluffy lap dog more tragic than Old Yeller. This is a woman who never grew up. But Mavis' most troubling stuntedness lies in her decision to drive back to her hometown of Mercury, Minn., after she receives an e-mail announcing her high school flame Buddy Slade's (Patrick Wilson) new baby. Her plan is to wrest Buddy away from his sweet, kindhearted wife (Elizabeth Reaser) and new baby daughter.

Occupy Alliance

(Photo courtesy of the Alliance Theatre)

Foreclosures, an enormous gap between the haves and the have-nots, unscrupulous money-lending, greed and social injustice. No it’s not America circa 2011 but Victorian England mid-recession, the suddenly oh-so-relevant setting for the Alliance Theatre’s classic A Christmas Carol (through Dec. 24, www.alliancetheatre.org).

On the occasion of the first Occupy Wall Street Christmas, Charles Dickens is feeling a bit more 99 percentish these days. In their slightly tongue-in-cheek catalogue of fictional money bags, Forbes’ “Fictional 15” has clocked Scrooge’s worth at $1.7 billion, trailing Daddy Warbucks and Montgomery Burns. Black Friday sales may have been brisk but the air of regret and despondency that characterizes A Christmas Carol is a welcome lesson in moderation, charity, consideration and other seasonal touchy-feelyness that we hope our children will absorb in between trips to REI and Best Buy.