I've spent the last two weekends binging on Christmas shows. Now I'm ready to purge a great spout of candy canes, top hats, and apple-cheeked children. The glut of sugary Christmas plays has spawned a counter-market of ironic seasonals that are shallower and more tedious than their sincere forebears.
'Twas a Night of Shitty Theater tries to poke fun at crappy Christmas shows and, a couple of jokes aside, never achieves liftoff. Forbidden Xmas is uneven, but it's the best of the winking plays, a goofy Christmas cabaret with lyrics like: "We've got a Christmas cash cow... it'll pay for the rest of the year." At least they're honest.
I've already spilled plenty of digital and analog ink on this year's best Christmas shows: Wonderful Life (WET's love letter to Capitol Hill) and the exquisite tackiness of Dina Martina. I'm an annual fan of ACT's A Christmas Carol (the only Christmas sap I unabashedly lap), and Fellow Passengers to the Grave, a three-actor adaptation rooted more deeply in the original text, makes an illuminating companion piece. Todd Jefferson Moore is great, adding more human nuance to Scrooge than the usual muttering caricatures. He and the other actors scamper like children across Erin Eave's cluttered-attic set. (Dickens's story is especially germane in light of Bill O'Reilly's "War on Christmas" bullshit. The story that invented America's Christmas aesthetic is mystical but secular: Scrooge is redeemed as a humanist citizen, a full participant in the social contract. Christ gets only passing mention in the world's second-most important Christmas tale.)
Speaking of Jesus, a couple of atheist theater snobs said they really loved Black Nativity.
***
"Well, we don't see this at the symphony," an older man chuckled as he hustled down the smoke-choked aisles at On the Boards. "Ladies and gentlemen!" artistic director Lane Czaplinski shouted to audience members shivering on the sidewalk, "Welcome to live theater!"
The sudden fire alarm—caused by generous billows of stage smoke—perfectly complemented Bloody Mess, a theater salad of brutal slapstick, aggressive clowns, weeping waterlogged divas, boobs, beer, smashed chairs, blaring rock 'n' roll, and a dozen other oddities. "Is this part of the show?" a friend said when the fire alarm went off. " 'Cause that'd be fucking awesome."
Bloody Mess was supposed to be two and a half hours without an intermission. "I'm glad we got a smoke break," said a young man puffing on a cigarette. "I was getting a little bored, but now it's unbearably hip."
After the show, a middle-aged man with a cigarette saw one of the actors walking out the door. (She was beautiful and had spent the performance in a gorilla costume, periodically hoping aloud that we were fantasizing about "you fucking me and me fucking you and you fucking me... ")
"I didn't think about you once," the smoker said, half joking, half leering.
"Well," she shrugged, without a hint of disappointment. "You win some, you lose some."
