wayneharada.com

It’s not yet Halloween, but it’s getting to sound like Christmas. Yep, some acts have announced its December concerts, which will include holiday music as well as Hawaiian.

Here’s the early outlook:

First up: “Ho’okena for the Holidays” is the theme of a two-show visit Dec. 11 at 4:30 and 8 p.m. at Blue Note Hawaii at the Outrigger Waikiki resort. Yes, there will be some holiday tunes, but expect Hawaiiana, too.

First up: “Ho’okena for the Holidays” is the theme of a two-show visit Dec. 11 at 4:30 and 8 p.m. at Blue Note Hawaii at the Outrigger Waikiki resort. Yes, there will be some holiday tunes, but expect Hawaiiana, too.

Technically, Ho’okena and Makena, will be featured acts. The first is the usual trio featuring Horace Dudoit III, Chris Kamaka, and Glen H.K. Smith.  The second is a combination of Ho’okena with the Makaha Sons members Louis “Moon” Kauakahi and Eric Lee, thus the moniker Makena, a union of Ma-kaha and Ho’o-kena.

Nani Dudoit, new kumu hula (and wife of Horace) will hula. And special guests will be the duo of Kala’e Paris and Kalenaku DeLima.

Earlier reports of this show had different curtain times, so note the changes.

Tickets: (808) 888-4890 at www.bluenotehawaii.com …

Next up: Na Leo Pilimehana will stage a dinner concert Dec. 17, at the Kalakaua Ballroom of the Hawaii Convention Center.

Na Leo is comprised of Nalani Jenkins, Lehua Kalima and Angela Morales-Escontria, high school classmates who turned the friendship into a lasting performance and recording career.

Doors open at 5 p.m., with guest performer Maunalua aboard. A buffet dinner will precede the 7 p.m. concert that will include Na Leo’s holiday and Hawaiian tunes.

Tickets: $185, includes the buffet dinner plus a Na Leo CD. Keiki up to 2 years are free, but those bringing strollers that take a seat place must buy a ticket.

Tickets are available at www.hawaiiconvention.com

Finally: Kalani Pe’a will headline a Hawaiian Christmas show, at 7 p.m. Dec. 22 at the Hawaii Theatre.

Pe‘a is a three-time Grammy winner, whose repertoire includes Hawaiian Christmas songs and he’ll embrace holiday tunes, too.

Tickets: $45 to $100, available at www.hawaiitheatre.com …

Rady or not, ‘Magnum’ is filming

There’s still no word when “Magnum P.I.” will surface under the NBC banner, after CBS nixed a season five. However, filming’s under way here.

And there’s good news:  Michael Rady, a familiar face from “Chicago: Med” and “Timeless,” has been tapped for a recurring role.

He’ll play Det. Chris Childs of the Honolulu Police Department, and he’ll debut in the fifth season’s premiere, airdate not yet announced.

So Rady joins series regulars Jay Hernandez, Perdita Weeks, Zachary Knighton, Stephen Hill, Tim Kang, and Amy Hill, in the new chapter. And “Magnum” has a planned two-season run …

Broadway grosses, for week ending Oct. 9

Broadway continues to rack up decent grosses, despite the waning pandemic.

The top five in terms of gross: No. 1, “The Music Man,” $3.099 million; No.2, “Hamilton,” $2.158 million; No. 3, “The Lion King,” $2.066 million; No. 4, “Wicked,” $1.839 million; and No. 5, “MJ the Michael Jackson Musical,” $1.765 million.

The list of grosses, courtesy The Broadway League:

And that’s Show Biz. …

Murder, she wrote.

Musicals, she played.

Magic, she created.

Angela Lansbury, a Londoner who became an icon of theater, TV and films, died  in her sleep Oct. 11 in Los Angeles. She was 96; she would have turned 97 in five more days.

She was a global sensation, bringing dignity, charm, and radiance to any role she tackled. Her incredible career spanned eight decades and embraced television, movies, and the Broadway stage. Clearly, she was one of the rare ones, who kept reinventing herself in all phases of show biz.

Adults remember her for playing Jessica Fletcher, on CBS’ long-time crime caper, in which she was the irrepressible sleuth and busybody who always tried to solve a case before the usual investigators.

On stage, there was nothing she couldn’t portray. I first saw her in “Mame” on Broadway, in 1996, which earned her the first of five Tony Awards (six, counting a Lifetime Achievement Award), which proved she could sing and dance and act. But she also won hurrahs for “Gypsy,”  which I saw in London, which added Rose in her repertoire. In perhaps her most challenging Broadway musical, Stephen Sondheim’s  “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” she was perfection as Nellie Lovett, the baker creating meat pies, in a stunning adult musical directed by Hal Prince and co-starring Len Cariou as the murderer. She brought her own version of Madame Armfeldt, in Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music,” which earned her a Tony nomination.

One of her last roles on Broadway was “Deuce,” in 2007, a drama by Terence McNally, which  paired Lansbury with Marian Seldes in a not-so-popular vehicle that also starred an invisible but audible bouncing tennis ball, with both actresses conversing and looking left and right and left and right in  a monotonous exercise in tedium. This was a rare  Lansbury; she forgot her text and you could hear the prompter throwing out her lines. Ouch!

In films, she provided the voice of charm as Mrs. Potts, the teapot in Disney’s animated movie, “Beauty and the Beast,” singing the title tune that youngsters adopted. ‘Twas a tale as old as time, still resonating with nostalgia.

She was a character actress, too, in a slew of films, like “Gas Light,” “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and “The Manchurian Candidate,” earning Oscar nominations. Her lone Academy Award was an honorary one, for her dramatic roles.

And one of her little known roles – she played the mother of the Elvis Presley in “Blue Hawaii” – gave her island ties and perhaps provoked a trivia question in her filmography.

Lansbury might have been the right actress at the right time, on the Great White Way.  She was a Broadway musical headliner, in the wake of Ethel Merman, and  logically the inspiration for the next and current-generation of Broadway divas like Bernadette Peters, Kelli O’Hara and Sutton Foster.

She was legendary in a craft requiring triple-threat skills and I’m blessed to have experienced her grace and magic in  live in shows that are now  classics in the Broadway library. May she be taking her bows in the great theater in the skies. …

Commercial break

I’ve been missing the chuckles, watching Frank DeLima do his multi-tutu-in-muumuu TV commercials for The Cab, so I asked him recently why the spot – which even used to be shown in movie theaters – was yanked.

“Because the cab business is down,” he said. During the pandemic, visitors to Hawaii were down, perhaps locals just stayed home, and it’s likely Lyft and  Uber services were up due to their cheaper fares?

DeLima’s comedic presence made the commercial particularly effective, since his utterance of the cab company’s phone number, (808) 422-2222, helped make it a household number hard to forget. …

Shelton will exit ‘The Voice’

Blake Shelton will wind up his career as judge on NBC’s “The Voice,” exiting his turn-around chair in Season 23, which begins in January 2023.

Joining remaining coach Kelly Clarkson will be Chance the Rapper and Niall Horan, formerly of One Direction.

Shelton, a singer with roots in country music, has been the winningest coach on the talent competition over the past 12 years, with eight of his picks resulting as the last one standing.

His wife, Gwen Stefani, has been an intermittent judge; they married in 2021.

Show host Carson Daly also will continue.

With two shows a week, during a typical run of the competition, judging is a mammoth task.

The question, however, is the show has yet to have a bona fide breakout star. Like, can you name at least three “Voice” winners of the past?  Didn’t think so. ..

And that’s Show Biz. …