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ORLANDO, FL – If you have a love of arena rock and a love of Christmas, The Trans Siberian Orchestra’s rock opera “Christmas in The Attic” is for you. The TSO has a reputation for blazing lights, screaming guitars, pyro and lasers, and synthed out Christmas Carols. TSO delivers, and delivers BIG.
On Sunday’s late show at the Amway Center in Orlando, the show starts with a giant video screen showing an animation of of someone entering and wandering through house in the woods, ending up in the attic. In the back of the attic we reach an old trunk. The video fades and the entire stage,actually the entire side of the arena glows with stunning starlights. Power rock ensues as we are taken through “Time and Distance” with dazzling lights and smoke that continue throughout the show and re-establish that this indeed is a TSO arena rock show.
Now we get to the good stuff. A giant trunk sits center stage. The lid rises up and a string section, the drummer and synth player rise from beneath with the inside of the lid being a giant video screen.
The Storyteller, Daniel Barnes (who’s deep baritone voice soothes but commands attention at the same time) takes us through line by line of “The Christmas Attic story”. It’s the story of a girl who finds a trunk in an attic and opens it to find a series of letters, each letter having a different person’s story and a different song in the show. We are treated to ballads that open up to power chord rock songs such as “The World He Sees”, as well songs like “Boughs of Holly, a rocked out version of “Deck the Halls” with a rock violinist and screaming guitar solos, and “March of The Kings” which depicts a book report about the Three Kings, taking a jazzy turn of “We Three Kings”. There are dramatic ballad performances throughout that give us a bit of a breather and take a softer turn on some of the emotional letters.
You hear references and styles of Aerosmith, Van Halen and Led Zeppelin throughout the show, even taking cranking out their own version of Beethoven’s Fifth. Platforms rise from the stagefront and the center of the arena, taking rockers high above the crowd as they slay serious guitar solos with hair shaking moves and poses. Syncopated fire, lasers, and light flashes serve to take the songs to dizzying hights.
The show is an arena rock show for sure. Trans Siberian Orchestra’s “The Christmas Attic” show is a spectacle to behold, especially for arena rock opera fans.
