First of all, it’s puppets on strings. Second, you’ve got a plot that includes Santa’s workshop, Hanukkah and Charles Dickens. Third, it’s an Angeleno rite of passage to see a Bob Baker show.
The show lasts about an hour. This year the holiday production runs through Jan. 12. Most shows are on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, but from Tuesday, Dec. 17, through Dec. 24 there are two to four shows per day. There are also two shows Tuesday, Dec. 31.
Bob Baker founded the theater in 1963 with partner Alton Wood, created thousands of marionettes and ran the outfit for decades in a rustic cinder block-walled space near the edge of downtown Los Angeles. Legions of pint-size Angelenos passed through, many of them now grandparents.
Since Baker’s death in 2014, the troupe has moved to a splendid (and very red) space on York Avenue in Highland Park.
The venue holds fewer than 100 people, and most kids sit “criss-cross applesauce” style on the carpet in front. Weekend shows typically begin with jaunty organ intro music by Ed Torres, followed by shows that draw from a potential cast of 100 or more marionettes, which waltz madly, sing operatically, bat eyelashes and operate right at a kid’s eye level. At the end of most shows (don’t tell the kids), there’s surprise ice cream.
Tickets for “Holiday on Strings” are $28 for adults and children, advance reservations required. (Children 2 and under sitting on laps are free.)