The Guide

With its unforgettable music, charming story and the iconic imagery, “The Nutcracker” has become synonymous with the holiday season. The Hilton Head Dance Theatre has presented “The Nutcracker” every November since 1985, and this year’s 24th annual production opens this weekend.

By Tim Adam Donnelly • Special to The Guide

Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit” was designed to serve as an escape from wartime London in the midst of the tragedy of World War II.

The story — a comic farce with plenty of Coward’s trademark twists — was written in 1941 in the midst of the siege on Britain, but it’s set in the decade before the war. It begins with novelist Charles Condomine (Michael Weaver) inviting the spirit medium Madame Arcati (Sheila Kadra) over for a dinner party to help research his new mystery novel. While there, the medium conducts a séance and inadvertently summons the ghost of Charles’ first wife, Elvira (Christine Grefe), whose embarks on mission of trying to disrupt Charles’ marriage to his second wife, Ruth (Maya White).

Pete Yorn's scheduled Saturday appearance at the Shoreline Ballroom has been called off, according to the venue and Yorn's national publicist. Both say the date will be rescheduled. For information and refunds, call 843-842-0358 or go to http://shorelineballroom.com.

Free family night at The Sandbox
Friday’s Family Fun Night at The Sandbox, An Interactive Children’s Museum on Hilton Head Island will double as a thank-you event for soldiers and their families. Local Marines will be on hand to collect new, unwrapped toys for Toys for Tots and the Blue Star Mothers also will collect items to be sent overseas to soldiers deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. This free monthly event runs from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. and features activities, arts and crafts, snacks and drinks. The Sandbox is located at 18A Pope Ave., next to St. Andrew’s by the Sea United Methodist Church.
Details: 843-842-7645

The Chinese-born, America-based pianist Xiayin Wang is receiving rave reviews for her new CD of the work of Alexander Scriabin. She’ll be performing several of his pieces — along with work by Haydn, Debussy, Gershwin, Bach and Chopin — at 8 p.m. today at the Arts Center of Coastal Carolina on Hilton Head Island.

Wang said her early exposure to Scriabin came from a performance by one of the 20th century’s master pianists, Vladimir Horowitz.

“The first piano work I heard of Scriabin was the ‘Vers La Flamme’ performed by Vladimir Horowitz, and right then I fell in love with Scriabin’s music,” she said. “His music is full of colors, fire, mysticism, passion and a tremendous amount of emotions, and to me, those things are what I am looking for in music, in piano playing and performing.”

Sandbox fundraiser at Barnes and Noble
What: Fundraiser for the Sandbox. Youngsters are encouraged to wear costumes. Halloween arts and crafts, floor puzzles, a “not-so spooky” story time, costume parade and contests.
When: 4:30-6:30 p.m. today and 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday
Where: Barnes and Noble, 20 Hatton Place, Hilton Head Island
Details: 843-342-6690,
www.thesandbox.org

Trick-or-treating at Shelter Cove Harbour

‘Michael Jackson’s This Is It” looks beyond the reconstructed face and spindly body of the late King of Pop and basks in his meteoric light.

Culled from more than 100 hours of footage documenting Jackson’s preparation for what was to be his farewell concert stand, the film is a privileged peek at the creative process of pop music’s Peter Pan.

The show Jackson was putting together was a compendium — and cinematic reimagining — of his greatest hits, from “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ ” to “Man in the Mirror.” The film, directed by Kenny Ortega (“High School Musical”), is an unfinished work, a lyrical and intimate tribute to an unfinished life. Watching this footage is comparable to being in the kitchen, savoring the smells and sampling tidbits, as a banquet is being prepared, but not getting to see it — or taste it — as it is served.

Last Updated: Nov. 4

CANCELED
• Pete Yorn: 8 p.m. Nov. 7 at the Shoreline Ballroom, Ocean Center, 40 Folly Field Road, Hilton Head Island. $20 in advance, $23 day of show. 843-842-0358. www.shorelineballroom.com

THIS WEEK
• Jeremy Davis and the Equinox Jazz Quintet: 7 p.m. Nov. 6-7 at the Jazz Corner, Village at Wexford, Hilton Head Island. 843-842-8620. www.thejazzcorner.com
• Angie Aparo: Nov. 7 at the Big Bamboo, 1 North Forest Beach Drive, No. 210, Coligny Plaza, Hilton Head Island. 843-686-3443.

UPCOMING SHOWS

By JEFF VRABEL • 843-706-8140

Well, everything seems to be under control around here. Swine flu is getting good and vaccinated, at least among you chirpy, vivacious Younger People. Windows 7 is out, giving us Mac people another great many reasons to direct smug, self-important smirks at each other (try it, it’s fun). The Balloon Boy’s weird parents will soon be given over to torture, as they should be. Yep, everything would be pretty much as solid as could be expected, were it not for the small flotilla of behemoth Burmese pythons slithering their way from Florida to the Lowcountry to devour us all.

Now, unless you are aficionado of Celtic music or belts, there’s really no upside to learning that many thousands of snakes are en route to your town, and yet this may be the case, according to a story last week that has inexplicably not caused residents to scamper chaotically into the streets with curlers in their hair, slippers on their feet and mad rictus grins of horror frozen on their faces. Because, and I want to be absolutely clear on this, SNAKES ARE COMING TO KILL US ALL. You guys have your little slap-fights on the blogs about health care or whatever, I’ll be moving all my essential documents, potable water and slow, chewy smaller dogs to the top floor.

By JEFF VRABEL • 843-706-8140

For a number of extremely appropriate reasons, the music of Social Distortion serves as a particularly effective antidote — or at least an accompaniment — to adolescent-era small-town near-panicky Friday night restlessness, which is why theirs was generally the first cassette Aaron Bradshaw would snap into his tape deck on our regular, mostly pointless semi-excursions into northwest Indiana nights (usually the one with “Ball and Chain,” the band’s definitive kiss-off to a tortured relationship that either of us would have sold the other out for without a second thought).