Weekend Roundup: Music and Run Alongs?

The holiday season is well underway in the South Sound, with a roster of Christmas events and shows in the works so deep that holiday hunters can’t go wrong wearing their red-and-white hats around town. There are concerts and theater performances and runs and sing alongs.

Tacoma Youth Chorus will be at it again with its holiday concert set for 2 and 5 p.m. on Saturday
 Dec. 19 at Lagerquist Hall at Pacific Lutheran University. With tickets costing only $15, this show will be likely be the host heart-warming event of the weekend since some of those angelically young singers are just so darn cute in their shirts and ties and shiny black shoes.

Also on Saturday is Santa Runs Tacoma around Tacoma’s Thea Foss Waterway. This set of 5K, 10K and 1K children’s runs will mean joggers in red hats and cross trainers pounding around the waterfront. Imagine a parade of Santas, but just a bit faster. Race organizers have set up a way to allow runners and groups of runners to support local non-profit organizations with their donations and registration. Lindquist Dental Clinic for Children is collecting donations for the “All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth” campaign to help uninsured children receive much-needed dental care, for example.

On the entertainment front, “A Tuna Christmas,” the second installment of the antics of the less-than-cultured residents of Tuna, Texas. The show is a great partnership between Tacoma Little Theatre and Lakewood Playhouse. TLT’s Scott Campbell and Lakewood’s Marcus Walker bring a whole mess of funny in this show as they march through the parade of some two dozen characters from radio broadcasters to animal rights activists to bratty teen-agers.
The show runs at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday through Dec. 24. Tickets are $16 to $24. The theater is located at 210 N. I St.

And the powerhouse show of the weekend will be the Tacoma Symphony Chorus) doing the full Messiah set with Geoffrey Boers as conductor at 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 18 at St. Charles Borromeo Church.