This new "family-friendly" show for the holidays could be presented anytime, as there's nary a sprig of holly or a "Bah, humbug" in sight. Know has assembled a talented cast who work hard to bring to life a collection of strange and silly stories from Louis Sachar's books for kids about a school that's 30 stories tall due to an architectural mistake, but ultimately I found myself bored with 90 minutes of forced zaniness.   

It's the time of year when theaters hope to strike holiday gold with shows that will deliver lots of ticket revenue — enough to provide the funds needed for the second half of their seasons. The hands-down winner, of course, is Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol,' a budget balancer for the Cincinnati Playhouse since 1991. But there are plenty of other holiday-themed stories being told on local stages this season.  

Vanity Theft makes Indie Pop music that's fun, danceable and brazen. Alicia Grodecki and Brittany Hill are co-lead singers, usually singing together and concocting some mesmerizing, creative harmonies. They have that kind of harmony-mind-meld that usually only comes from siblings.  

Community media center Media Bridges celebrates its 20th birthday with the benefit show "Free Wave Riot: Celebrating 20 Years of Local Music, Local Voices, Local Media" at Know Theatre in Over-the-Rhine. Funds are being raised to launch the diverse, independent FM radio station WVQC: Radio Free Queen City, which is scheduled to hit 95.7 FM this fall. Saturday's concert stars IsWhat?! (pictured), Culture Queer, The Tigerlilies, J. Dorsey Blues Revival, Fourth Letter Gang, Losanti and others. Requested donation is $9.57.   

Elsewhere on this site, you can read my review of Jersey Productions' 'Oklahoma!', which represents more than the opening of Jersey's fourth season. It's part of an innovative arrangement with Know Theatre. The two companies are moving forward with complimentary programs and strengthening one another at the same time. That's good news for everyone who cares about live theater in Greater Cincinnati.  

The Cincy Fringe Festival soon kicks off its sixth annual celebration of offbeat theater and other art forms. Not every city has a Fringe Festival, and occasionally people ask why we have one. The quick response is similar to the one sometimes offered as to why a city needs an alternative newsweekly like CityBeat: A conservative, buttoned-down place needs events and media that shake things up, that give us a new perspective on things.  

CCM acting professor k. Jenny Jones and 20 of her students have put together a good old-fashioned story, a multi-cultural re-imagining of the Everyman morality epic.   

If Greater Cincinnati is a conservative region filled with tight-ass people, the Cincy Fringe Festival is a laxative. It loosens us up, gets things moving a little better and smoother. Maybe the Fringe Festival is fiber in our otherwise meat-and-potatoes cultural diet. The annual event helps balance out the rest of our stodgy, by-the-book year.  

Is Know Theatre obsessed with death? Following a production of Sarah Ruhl's 'Eurydice,' about a songwriter who tries to retrieve his beloved bride from the Underworld, the Over-the- Rhine theater is now presenting Noah Haidle's 'Vigils,' about a widow who keeps the soul of her dead husband, a firefighter, imprisoned in a trunk.   

Sarah Ruhl's script and Know's production, inventively and fluidly directed by Jason Bruffy, make this telling of the sad tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, with its roots in ancient Greece, more profound. It's not merely about the loss of a passionate love: 'Eurydice' becomes an exploration of the many forms of love and connection, especially between a father and a daughter.