Grubb Street wishes you and yours a safe and happy Holiday Season.
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| Rest on the Flight into Egypt by Luc Olivier Merson (1879), MFA, Boston. |
Snowed In (Again) by Corinne Park Buffelen, Music composed by David Taylor Gomes, Directed by Kelly Kitchens. Arts West through December 22.
It was fun. And so we do it again this year. New cast, similar cabin, tasked with putting together a SEQUEL to the previous show. So we get a mixture of songs from the previous year ("Bonita the Sexiest Christmas Elf") with a few newcomers (Grampus" - a wonderful paen to family holiday gatherings with that Grinchic patriarch), along with interstitial material dealing with family traditions and paralyzing deadline pressure. And Olive (the Other Reindeer) makes a return as well.
And the cast is in fine voice and high spirits - Lauren Drake, Ays Garcia, Alexander Kilian, and Brandon Reil as the "new kids" ensemble, Aaron Jin on the keyboard. And they are excellent, though competing with Sarah Russell's rendition of "I'm Happy Being Hosted" is a tough lift. That's one of the challenges of doing a sequel - comparison with the original flavor. And the choreography was sharp and in places hilarious. .This year's version had less nods to Seattle and more to the season, which is cool as well.
A nit? Sure, but just one. The blocking and set design had a seat for the actors directly in front us in the front row, so I had a case of looking at the back of the actor's heads. And butts. Not that there's anything wrong with that. And it was amusing to see Alexander Killan curled up in a fetal position from the sudden stress of creating an all-new show with the old material. So there's that.
The humor is broad, the actors are spirited, the feelings are grounded. No heavy stakes, no character arcs, no (major) lessons learned. It is very much a Holiday Revue, put together with heart and soul. Yeah, it was fun and a great way to enter the holiday season.
More later,
Yes, I know, I'm tempting fate, but I miss snow in this season. May everyone have a safe, sane, and healthy holiday from Grubb Street.
I talked previously about Little Women being a "Holiday Play", in that it a relatively family-safe classic that invokes the holidays, in a similar manner to "Die Hard" or "The Thin Man". Neither of those two movies are ABOUT the holidays, but it provides part of the spine and connectivity of the presentation.
Snowed In, on the other hand is VERY much the holiday play in that it seizes the season by the throat and grapples it into submission. Four performers their piano accompanist decamp to a well-appointed mountain cabin with a killer deadline to come up with a Christmas show. And by Christmas Eve's eve they still got nuthin'. And then they are snowed in. So they are frantically working on producing something while unsure if it is going to see the light of day.
And that's about it for the plot. The Lovely Bride mentioned that it is more of a musical revue than a musical, and she's right - there are a lot of sketches and bits strung through the evening, all tied into the holiday season. There's not a lot of character evolution or overwhelming moral, and the ending is more than just a bit meta. But still, its a really good show, because of the performers.
And I've seen most of these actors before on-stage, which is something that I've mentioned as being a plus for local theatre. Sarah Russell starred in Lydia and the Troll at the Rep. Rachel Guyer-Mafune was in The Last World Octopus Wrestling Champion here at Arts West, and Feathers and Teeth at the 12th Avenue. Christian Quinto was ALSO in The Last World Octopus Wrestling Champion. Nik Hagen was the new kid for me, and had incredible dance moves. And Riley Brule was the pianist of the group and thematically the most grounded and rock-solid of the characters. All the actors had incredible voices and passionate deliveries (If I had to rank them, Quinto was probably the weakest, but that's just by comparison). There were a lot of topical references (GPTChat, Tindr) and local touches (count the localities given a nod). The original songs were cool and there were several show-stoppers in the collection.
But it is a holiday revue. The stakes are not high, and it deals with the whole back-stage musical that actors have loved since Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. It is one of those shows which benefit from an engaged, amused audience, and our Friday night had both, in particular a trio of patrons right ahead of us who were Friends of the Performers AND/OR Drinking Before the Show, since they were loudly enthusiastic about every song.
In the end, this is a sugared gumdrop of a show, heavy on the sweetness and light, millennial in its sensibilities. It was a fine time had by all. Ho, ho, ho.
More later,
Wishing everyone a safe and happy Holiday Season from Grubb Street.
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| Merson - Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1879) |
Wishing you a safe, sane, and secure Holiday Season.
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| Art by Eyvind Earle |
More later,
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| Rest on the Flight into Egypt, 1879 Luc Olivier Merson |
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| Rest on the Flight into Egypt by Luc Olivier Merson (1879), MFA, Boston. |
IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blowBy: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
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| Rest on the Flight into Egypt by Luc Olivier Merson (1879), MFA, Boston. |
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| Lockheed, in happier times. |
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| "Rest on the Flight into Egypt" by Luc Olivier Merson, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
