Santa, baby!

Minneapolis, Minnesota

In a season long and rich in performances, the best holiday show happened Dec. 12, when 12 members of the touring cast of Les Misérables, led by Jason Forbach, presented "It Might Be Hope," a benefit concert for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, at The Lab Theater in Minneapolis. 

The performers, who have toured together for a year, devoted their weekly night off to a performance of personable and engagingly-intimate, solo and ensemble renditions of tunes secular and religious, sublime and ridiculous.

Forbach, a native of Overland Park, Kansas, hosted the show which included a star turn by the Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus singing three numbers from its just-completed holiday concert. 

A believer in "the power of faith when following a dream," Forbach gifted each attendee with a copy of his holiday EP, "Remembering to Dream."

Since 1988, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS has raised and granted more than $123 million. 

Under the leadership of its entertainment empress, Mary Kelley Leer, the 350-seat Lab Theater continues to evolve into one of the most exciting and flexible performance spaces in the Twin Cities. 

The Minneapolis run of Les Miz continues at the Orpheum Theatre, through Dec. 18.