“Any holiday that forces families to get together is evil.” The latest of quotable nonsense from acclaimed entertainment-writer Ken Levine. This time its from his new work, On The Farce Day of Christmas, now appearing live on stage (with streaming options!) at Best Medicine Rep Theatre in Gaithersburg. Directed by Ken Levine, this holiday hilarity is quite the cute little comedy and will tickle your funny bone just in time for the never-ending December holiday season, which seems to start in October these days!
What has the potential to be a brilliant and witty, quick-paced comic farce for the holidays falls ever so slightly short thanks to playwright Ken Levine’s misunderstanding of the difference between live theatre and television, which is often filmed in front of a live studio audience. Levine has written a tight and succinct holiday farce. And he’s ruined the natural flow and build of his own brilliance by forcing an intermission into the already truncated action of the show. (The show is written with an intermission as as the playwright is coming to see the show and do a talk-back with the audience during the run, the production is presented with an intermission much to the detriment that such a gaping pause causes to the overall experience of the performance.) Levine must believe that a break in the action will cause the audience to ponder and ruminate over what’s about to happen, when in actuality, the pause is so jarring, it takes the audience completely out of the action and invites them to take the company up on the other half of their promise. (The company’s long-standing motto is to deliver the old Irish doctor proverb of “a good dose of laughter and sleep are the best medicine” and they tout that if they cannot deliver one they will certainly deliver the other!) Ultimately Levine is his own worst enemy in this regard, taking a five-star performance and knocking it down to a four-star one with this frivolous, unnecessary intermission.
Director Stan Levin does a fine job working with the cast he’s got, though there are moments when the fight choreography could have been tighter. (It is understandable, though still slightly disappointing, that after so much time away from live theatre and everyone still being super cautious because of the ongoing pandemic, that one’s fight-choreography may not be completely up to snuff.) There are a few minor moments here and there where a line of dialogue could be exchanged more quickly or delivered more snappily to further enhance the hilarity of the show, but for the most part Levin puts forth a crisply timed and well-executed farce, really letting the comic brilliance of Ken Levine’s script land on its own. (even with the stifling and unnecessary intermission.) The director, Stan Levin, wears and shares the cap of ‘Set & Sound Designer’ with company artistic director John Morogiello. The pair bring a truly delightful and quaint Christmas set to bare on the stage. It looks like Santa vomited in the charming living room of the Utah religious folks and that really helps to set the mood. There are Christmas carols poised all throughout the show, helping to cover scenic transitions, though Levin and Morogiello miss a huge opportunity to really tie one of playwright Ken Levine’s lines into a brilliant moment of “play meets sound design.” A character confesses a big secret— about loving Karen Carpenter— at the end of a scene, which quickly fades to dark-out, and the musical selection here is? Literally any other Christmas song that wasn’t a Karen Carpenter song. And while a Karen Carpenter Christmas song does get played during the curtain call finale, the woman didn’t write just one. Otherwise, the song selections are delightful and help remind everyone in the audience that despite the farcical chaos on the stage, it really is supposed to be “the most wonderful time of the year.”
Morogiello, in addition to assisting with scenery and sound design, dons the cap of Lighting Designer and to great effect! There’s little to be done by way of “special lighting” for a play that takes place in entirely one room— an ordinary, present day, living room in Utah. But where Morogiello puts his subtle illuminating tactics to work are in the soliloquys and flashback moments. Playwright Ken Levine has setup the script so that various characters (there are only six to begin with and one of them doesn’t show up until the very end of the play) address the audience with the express purpose of context and backstory. Morogiello highlights these soliloquy moments in blue. These moments are almost immediately followed by a flashback to something that happened prior to the arrival at the house in Utah, and Morogiello takes the opportunity to was the stage in red, signaling the flashback. Simple but clean and very effect, these lighting moments help the audience understand all of the narrative and temporal jumps in Levine’s work.
As mentioned the show is really an ensemble piece, having just six characters— Wendy (Kathleen Barth), Gary (Evan Crump), Mom (Jean Rosolino), Dad (Mickey Rimarchi), Karen (Abigail Weinel), and Chip (Rocky Nunzio), with the aforementioned Chip being the character that has ‘in-mention’ time only until the end of the play. For the two and a half minutes that Nunzio’s character does appear live in person, he’s quite the comic crackup, playing an overly sensitive, borderline obsessive, effeminate soul. It’s quite hilarious, adding just one more layer of disaster to the holiday from hell happening in the living room in Utah.
Mom (Jean Rosolino) and Dad (Mickey Rimarchi) provide a lot of comic moments in the production as well. There are a few moments when both characters/performers find themselves searching for the ‘where to go next’ moment, and its difficult to tell if this is a directorial choice trying to infer the age of the characters or if its just one of those moments, which happens to all of us, where we’ve lost sight of where exactly we are in that moment in time. Either way, it’s not enough to ruin or really even impede the performance, but if it was a directorial choice, it was a unique one worth mentioning. Rimarchi is a particularly bombastic actor, particularly when reliving his “Vietnam Moment” and when engaging in a rather skeevy eye-ogling way with the Karen character.
The knockout sensation of the show is the sudden and unexpected arrival of Karen (Abigail Weinel.) And props go to her costumer— Elizabeth Kemmerer— for giving her some truly sensual and holiday seasonal outfits. It borders on sexy while still being PG-13 and gives that auroa of Violet Bick, circa It’s A Wonderful Life (“…oh this old thing? I only wear it when I don’t care how I look!”) But beyond filling out the role of the ‘eye-candy-icon’ in the show, Weinel is an engaging performer, particularly when she gets her only soliloquy near the end of the performance. (There’s a whole “Where are they now” featuring at/during the curtain call that playwright Ken Levine could have done without; it’s a cop-out on his own work as if he didn’t believe that his ending was a strong enough finish on its own, and you get more of Weinel’s chic character then, but again, this bit— like the intermission— totally unnecessary.)
Gary (Evan Crump) and Wendy (Kathleen Barth) are the pivotal point around which the play revolves, devolves, spirals into flames, crashes, and burns. The pair bristle with volatile chemistry and it works for the sake of the farce. There are tiny moments (as previously mentioned) where some of the line delivery is just a hair off, which ordinarily would go unnoticed, but in a high-octane comedy, like this farce, just the slightest hiccup in pacing becomes noticeable. But otherwise their interactions, especially the fiery and dyspeptic ones, are really a hoot. Once Crump’s character falls under the influence of some random pain killers, it’s even more hilarious and this is also about the time in the script where Barth’s character blows her top, loses her cool, and reveals her true self. It’s a right holiday hellscape scream and the audience is tickled with laughter because of it.
A delightful alternative to your repetitive, run-of-the-mill Christmas Carol, Christmas Story, Wonderful Life, etc. This dainty and quaint little comic nugget of a farcical gem is indeed a dose of just what the doctor ordered. Don’t wait to get your tickets as it’s a three-weekend-only engagement!
Running Time: 90 minutes with an intermission
On The Farce Day of Christmas plays through December 12, 2021 with Best Medicine Rep Theatre in their residency of the Lakeforest Mall (yellow entrance left of Macy’s, ground floor!)— 701 Russell Avenue in Gaithersburg, MD. Tickets are available for purchase at the door or in advance online.
