Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts – December 16, 2025
When I found out that my former ride-or-die concert buddy Sophia was coming to town coinciding with this concert the only question was whether to see it in Santa Monica or Cerritos. We were working around her office Christmas party, so Cerritos it was. We met up at 4:00 for a 7:30 show and when Maps said it would take us an hour and a half to get there, we started on our way. We got to Cerritos with what we thought was plenty of time for a bite and a slice of pie at Polly’s, and it would have been had our waitress not been so pokey. We ended up running to the front to pay our tab and taking off with 10 minutes to go before showtime. And this is where things took a turn. I had loaded directions into Maps (I used Google, not Apple) and it was taking us in the opposite direction from where I thought I should be going. I kept saying, “It’s just one freeway exit to the east, why is it trying to take me west?” Sophia double checked and said, “Nope, this is correct.” We arrived to a fairly deserted parking lot and I kept driving around looking for something familiar. We finally looked carefully at the Performing Arts building and realized that we were at the Cerritos College Performing Arts building. Sigh. I really should have trusted my gut. So we quickly made our way to the correct performing arts center, which looked very familiar once we arrived. I parked and we high-tailed it into the building. The usher told us that we had been upgraded to orchestra seats and should go to the box office where we were given two orchestra tickets that were not next to each other. We went back to the box office and got our tickets exchanged for seats next to each other. I had of course, specifically chosen my cheaper seats to be front row center of the balcony so we’d have an unobstructed view and we found ourselves in the rear orchestra off to the side. There was no one sitting next to me (which I knew because that was the ticket we turned in to get seats together), so at least we were able to move over one seat closer to center.
And after all of that, as we took our seats the band was playing, but the three singers had not yet taken the stage so I feel like we didn’t miss too much. After another song or two, Jane Lynch, Kate Flannery and Tim Davis came out and opened with a beautiful harmony arrangement of Lullay Lullay before getting on with the real show. There was a lot of comedy interspersed with the music, which was swingin’ as promised. There were some original pieces as well as traditional Christmas songs – some with lyrics changed like “Good King What’s-His-Name”. Jane and Kate have been working together for a very long time, so their comedic timing was on point. Tim Davis’ mic was a little boomy. I’m not sure if that was a problem at the sound board or a problem with his mic technique. It was mostly fine, but whenever he sang alone it was a little jarring. The show seemed kind of short. It was supposed to be 90 minutes and I don’t think they quite hit that. It was a fun show though and I’m glad I went.