Review by John P. Harvey.

The ghosts of Christmases recent are alive and kicking in Michael Boyd’s annual Christmas variety show, in the form of eight dancers and four other very active performers, including singing soloist Prinnie Stevens, a native of Canberra. The show, although it clearly centres on Boyd himself and features Stevens as its nominal star, relies most heavily on various dance routines involving four to eight of the dancers in a variety of mostly bright, colourful costumes. These routines, varying little from year to year, are very well rehearsed and very smooth.

Since competing as an “Australia’s Got Talent” finalist as a stage magician, or “illusionist”, in 2013, Boyd has brought several other acts together into shows of greater or lesser variety. This year’s Christmas Spectacular combines singing by Stevens (backed by the dance troupe and recorded backing vocals), the aforementioned dancing, a few of Boyd’s pieces of stage magic, and an aerial artist with a gift for floor routines in which she performs her own magic upon vast numbers of hula hoops.

Familiar to those who have seen any of Boyd’s shows is a tale that Boyd loves to relate about how he came to take up the illusionist mantle via his stage-magician grandfather. Perhaps understandably given the other acts the show features, Boyd saves his most spectacular illusions for shows other than the Christmas Spectacular, but he obviously relishes the effects of those he does employ upon his younger audience members, and he routinely invites a very young audience member onto the stage to perform some magic with him, of which he is generous in his praise.

The single criticism that can be fairly levelled at the show concerns its lack of practical care for the hearing of its audience members, especially of its youngest. With growing experience in their work, sound technicians tend to become steadily more deaf to the higher frequencies. A common result is that, in tuning a show’s sound to punch through their own deafness with an audio spectrum that sounds perfect to them, such technicians produce a sound that, to those whose hearing is so far undamaged, is painfully harsh in the upper frequencies. Exposing young children to such treatment unfortunately perpetuates generational deafness. And it’s a problem that hearing-disabled sound technicians are resistant to solving until they realise that what makes the children and babies in the audience distressed enough to cry is simply the pain that excessive sound pressure causes in ears not already damaged by similar experiences.

That small criticism aside, Michael Boyd’s Christmas Spectacular is a show that young and old alike will find entertaining and engaging. At an hour and fifty minutes including interval, its length suits most, and its early session times make it an easy choice for anybody with family members who need their sleep early.