Tackling the Holidays

Upon entering ACT’s downstairs theater for
Sister’s Christmas Catechism, audience members are greeted by
a most welcome sight: a kids’ choir, a dozen or so members strong,
arranged on risers on the stage. Over the run of the production,
various local choirs will alternate singing duties. The night I
attended, our choir hailed from the Human Harmony Music Academy and
featured 11 kids between 5 and 14 singing Christmas standards laced
with rudimentary choreography; it was freaking adorable.

It’s a risky thing for an actor—especially a solo
performer—to share a stage with the unfettered, idiosyncratic
humanity of a kids’ choir, but if anyone could do it, Aubrey Manning
could. Not only has she honed her interactive-solo-performance chops
over a 10-year run in ACT’s Late Nite Catechism, by now she
qualifies as a common-law nun, and there’s not a Catholic
school–teaching sister in the world, real or fake, who’s gonna
let a bunch of uppity whippersnappers steal her God-given thunder.

Some background: Sister’s Christmas Catechism is the
holiday offshoot of Late Nite Catechism, the wildly successful
solo show written and originally performed by Chicago’s Maripat
Donovan, in which the audience is cast as a class of Catholic-school
students whom Sister lords over with a sharp tongue and an iron ruler.
It sounds cute—and it is—but it’s also pretty fucking
funny, thanks to the unquenchable comedic power of someone dressed like
a nun and acting like a jerk. Truly, Sister Tell-It-Like-It-Is is a
comic archetype on par with a monkey on skates, and Manning—the
Seattle actress who made Catechism a decadelong local
smash—nails her portrayal, laced with unforced warmth and an
impressive knowledge of Catholic lore. (Inspired only by an audience
member’s confirmation name, Sister can spin a yarn about the most
tangential saint you’ve never heard of.)

For Sister’s Christmas Catechism, the interactive classroom
action is bracketed by holiday-­themed pageantry. The choir
performs songs at the beginning and end, and an
audience-­participation re-creation of the Nativity (here spiked
with a CSI-themed search for the magi’s gold) takes up most of
Act 2. As with Late Nite, the majority of Christmas
Catechism is devoted to reenacting Catholic-school rituals:
standing up when Sister enters the room, answering questions with “Yes,
Sister,” withstanding grillings on the facts of confirmation, etc.
Manning’s Sister is a master of the passive insult and an ace
improviser, but an audience’s enjoyment of the Catechism franchise seems directly related to its appreciation of Catholic
culture. For me, a secular humanist on safari in Catholicland for the
night, the repetition and cutesy punning wore thin before intermission.
But for Catholics—and especially survivors of Catholic
school—the Catechism shows unlock something primal. For
people who lived this stuff, in situations where any humor was
forbidden, Manning’s Catechism creates a palpable
giddiness.

Like ACT’s Catechism, Open Circle Theater’s The Judy
Garland Christmas Special is built around a fierce improv talent:
Troy Mink, the Seattle performer whose uncanny channeling of batty old
dames is the stuff of legend (see The Haint, Carlotta’s
Late Nite Wing Ding). In The Judy Garland Christmas
Special, Mink gets to channel one of the battiest old dames in
history; he and a scrappy cast of fringe actors re-create the
nonexistent dress rehearsal for Garland’s legendarily messy CBS
Christmas Special of 1963 (when Garland was a pill-popping,
booze-quaffing tornado of erraticism). The conceit is a rich one, and
Mink’s embodiment of Garland is total. Unfortunately, as directed by
Ron Sandahl, the sloppiness of CBS’s Judy Garland Christmas
Special is too often indistinguishable from the sloppiness of Open
Circle Theater’s Judy Garland Christmas Special. Beyond Mink,
the show’s guest list (daughters Liza and Lorna, musical guest Mel
Torme) is a grab bag of hamminess that does nothing but distract from
the central performance, which is left with little to rub up against
until Special stumbles to its close. After each performance,
the audience is invited to stay for a group viewing of Garland’s
original CBS special, presumably to help contextualize the mess that
came before. It’s a losing proposition.

There are two types of Dina Martina shows: big, multimedia blowouts
and cozy cabaret affairs. This year’s The Dina Martina
Christmas Show is one of the latter, with our internationally
beloved psycho-drag chanteuse accompanied only by her stone-faced
pianist (Stranger Theater Genius Chris Jeffries) and her own
aggressively talent-free brand of superstardom. Things get off to a
slow start, with Dina creator Grady West wandering through some clowny,
repetitive shtick, but things kick in as Dina’s psyche splinters,
dragging the whole notion of a Christmas show kicking and screaming
into the stratosphere. Make no mistake: The Dina Martina
Christmas Show is for people who hate Christmas, or at least love
to hate Christmas. But with its warped tour of the holiday songbook,
smiley-faced blasphemy, and uniquely sweet brand of mind-fuckery,
Dina’s Christmas show once again coats audience members in something
very close to the holiday spirit. Special gifts of the 2009 season:
shocking testimonials about lactating pugs, aggressively molested Billy
Joel songs, and an alarmingly high-energy finale. Also: Dina’s first
display of actual musical talent EVER. If you can get a ticket, get a
ticket.