Staging a festive intervention

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/12/2020 (2100 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s online show All Is Bright is intended as a gift from the company to Manitoba theatregoers in lieu of the productions the company has had to cancel this season (and much of the last).

Perhaps the more accurate term would be “consolation prize,” given the COVID funk in which we find ourselves.

In any event, it’s a relentlessly festive piece, kicking off with a cheerful Jennifer Lyon razzle-dazzling Here We Come A-Caroling, dashing from the front of the RMTC building on Market, into the lobby and eventually onto the stage, where she is accompanied by a four-piece band. By dint of her sheer familiarity, Lyon, a musical theatre mainstay in the city, might as well have been singing God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, because her presence supplies a certain comfort and joy for the musical theatre aficionados.

An outdoor blessing by Métis Elder Dolores Gosselin (the only part of the show not shot on RMTC’s premises) feels like a sombre but meaningful substitute to the usual land acknowledgement that begins most RMTC shows. It is also a signal that this production will make an effort to represent a wider cultural base than the theatre’s usual holiday-season show.

The next bit, in fact, is a staged reading from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, with a candlelit Debbie Patterson doing a reading of the passage describing Ebenezer Scrooge encountering Jacob Marley’s ghost. Director (and also RMTC artistic director) Kelly Thornton wisely places this segment in early, because, even in a holiday show, there is such a thing as being too cheerful. You can’t appreciate the light without a touch of darkness, and Patterson dolefully provides.

Local singer Lisa Bell, whose star rose with her work in Danny Schur’s screen musical Stand!, injects a little gospel and soul into a stage performance of O Holy Night.

The show takes a risk with the next segment, Naughty or Nice, an improvised sketch from Outside Joke’s Toby Hughes and Robyn Slade, playing, respectively, an elf on a shelf and little girl trying to manipulate her way into getting a prized toy from Santa, courtesy of this watchdog elf. Though Hughes and Slade are brilliant improvisers, the form feels stilted when the performers can’t ping their energy off on a live audience

Cory Wojcik appears dressed as Santa in the RMTC paint shop, taking up his guitar and singing Jingle Bells in a bid to appeal to the younger kids.

That sweet requires some remedial savoury, which writer-performer Alex Poch-Goldin provides with his Hanukkah story The Latke Ladies, a tale of two women who have differing opinions on the sweet/savoury issue when it comes to the titular potato pancakes. Poch-Goldin’s broad, menorah-lit reading is easily the funniest piece in the show.

Another musical interlude, Carol of the Bells, performed by trio Karen Barg, Natalie Dawe and Andrew St. Hilaire, leads into the second Hughes/Slade improv piece, Santa’s Workshop, in which Hughes’ retirement-ready toymaker Elfonso reveals the centuries-old torch he’s been carrying for co-worker Elfvira, leading to Slade’s uproarious reaction: “Elfonso, you are dropping bombs.” OK, so maybe improv can work without an audience.

Venturing beyond the usual Christmas songbook, a breathtakingly gowned Stephanie Sy offers up a Filipino carol, Himig Ng Pasko (interpolating Silent Night along the way), followed by drummer Daniel Roy, in voyageur rig, picking up a pair of brushes and performing Mon beau sapin (O Christmas Tree).

It all ends up on the rooftop of RMTC, with Kevin McIntyre singing, nope, not Up on the Housetop, but Auld Lang Syne, a folkie interpretation that acknowledges the wistful feelings engendered by Christmas 2020.

Tickets for All Is Bright are free from tonight until Dec. 31, but are only available online through royalmtc.ca.

 

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing