Call it a kids show if you must. But know this: Even if you are generations beyond your single-digit years, “Jim Henson’s Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas” will fill you with giddy joy and have you snort-laughing with velocity enough to require a tissue. If you find no joy in the spectacle of a squirrel juggling act that ends with the lead squirrel doing a full-on deathdrop while their furry charges orbit above, you are having a bad day indeed.
The human/puppet hybrid production that opened this week in the Studebaker Theatre has a lengthy origin story: It started in 1971 as a children’s book by Russell and Lillian Hoban. In 1977 Jim Henson — father of the muppet kingdom that started in 1969 with the debut of “Sesame Street” — turned the book into a television special.
