Bringing the theater home with new CDs and DVDs

For the fond fans of theater you know, bestowing a holiday gift of show tickets is always a hit. But there a few CDs and DVDs related to the world of drama that we can as recommend as welcome gifts under the tree.

"Slings and Arrows," Seasons 1 and 2 (Acorn Media; $29.99 each): Rejoice, lovers of backstage intrigue, Shakespearean verse and Canadian wit! This delectable TV miniseries — originally produced for the Movie Network beginning in 2003 — is finally on DVD. And though each season is sold separately, we double-dare you to watch just one.

Set in a fictional Canadian Shakespeare theater in the town of New Burbage (read: Stratford, Ont.), this literate and hilarious soap opera plunges you into the world of actors' egos, directors' follies and theater administrators' anxieties.

The first season uses "Hamlet" as a point of departure for the death of the company's longtime director — who, by the way, sticks around as a ghost. In Season 2, his successor tries to hold the theater (and his sanity) together, while directing the most jinxed play in the canon: "Macbeth."

"South Pacific in Concert from Carnegie Hall" (Decca Broadway, $19.98) Who knew Reba McEntire would make such a great corny-as-Kansas-in-August nurse Nellie to Brian Stokes Mitchell's ultra-romantic "Some Enchanted Evening"-crooning Emil? Yet they match up swell, in this Carnegie Hall concert version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical set on a Pacific isle during World War II.

"Harry on Broadway Act 1," Harry Connick Jr. and others (Sony, $21.98): This two-CD set is worth having for its main attraction: the cast recording of a recent Broadway revival of "The Pajama Game," which reminded a lot of people how charming a show set in a pajama factory could be.

Connick does right by the biggest hit in the terrific Richard Adler-Jerry Ross score ("Hey There"). And he has lusty chemistry with his leading lady, Kelli O'Hara.

Less impressive, at least on first hearing, is the other disc, which presents jazzy settings of a short-lived Broadway show Connick composed, "Thou Shalt Not."

"Grey Gardens" (P.S. Classics, $18.98): Was anyone pining for a musical based on a film documentary about two broke, eccentric relatives of Jackie Kennedy Onassis — Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Little Edie Beale?

A dubious proposition. But the show (which recently moved from Off Broadway to Broadway) has a sharp book by Doug Wright and a surprisingly lovely and touching score by Scott Frankel and Michael Korie. The latter, captured on this original cast recording, makes the Bouviers' odd tale of grandly stunted lives much more than a freak show.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com