Silent Night of the Lambs

With a never-ending preponderance of comfort and joy this time of year, there’s always an underrepresented legion of the overwhelmed and over it. It’s to this population that Who Wants Cake? reaches out this holiday season with its hybrid Christmas suspense tale, Silent Night of the Lambs (by Ryan Landry). In essence a powerhouse thriller relocated to the North Pole, this Joe Plambeck–directed comedy delivers both greedily anticipated and unexpected notes of campy ho-ho-horror.

The story of The Silence of the Lambs is well preserved in this adaptation. In this world, the North Pole is policed by a fierce reindeer CIA, in which legacy Clarice Starling (Melissa Beckwith) is a green but promising up and comer. When a series of horrific murders breaks out, pushy Lt. Blitzen (Anne Faba) recruits Clarice to interview a disgraced and incarcerated Santa Claus (Dave Davies), in an effort to work every angle of the case. Concurrent stories push the action forward: even as vulnerable Clarice and demented Santa’s dangerously fruitful partnership points the good guys closer to the culprit, the monstrous, transformational killer has acquired the daughter of a hugely famous and influential name in holiday shopping, and the young woman’s life hangs in the balance.

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The All Night Strut Holiday Show

After reopening the historic theater two decades ago with The All Night Strut!, the Gem Theatre proudly comes full circle, celebrating its twentieth season and concurrently spreading holiday cheer in The All Night Strut Holiday Show (conceived and originally directed by Fran Charnas; musical arrangements by Tom Fitt, Gil Lieb, and Dick Schermesser, with additional orchestrations by Corey Allen). This production, recreated by Gary Thompson, fashions a revue of equal parts retread and sentiment that, beyond its seasonal appeal, promises to scratch the viewer’s every musical itch.

The show’s premise lies in its simplicity: revisiting beloved tunes circa the 1930s and ‘40s. Borrowing heavily from the original show, the first act finds performers Lianne Marie Dobbs, Marja Harmon, Jared Joseph, and Denis Lambert working their way through sparkling, peppy tunes with a hefty helping of wartime odes. For the second act, costume designer Mark Mariani turns the cheer up to eleven with dazzling plush ensembles as the score leaps headlong into Christmas songs (plus an extraneous bit of tokenism in a single Hanukkah number). A largely empty set is given dimension in Dana White’s cool lighting scheme, which puts the focus on the singers but also highlights the swinging three-piece band behind them (Ralphie Armstrong, Rob Emanuel, and music director Sven Anderson).

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Mid-Life Christmas

One could glean from the title of Mid-Life Christmas, Go Comedy!’s third annual holiday sketch show, that the well of holiday-themed content may be drying up at Southeast Michigan's preeminent improv theater. But based on the razor-sharp humor and screaming breakneck energy of director Pj Jacokes and his ensemble, one would be wrong. Indeed, this is a tightly packed and wildly varying show with not a misstep in sight.

From the outset, an army of characters hurtles across and around the stage, portrayed by a half dozen performers. As suggested by the title, the bloom is off the rose for many of these Christmases; life’s little disappointments and missed expectations are somehow magnified at the holidays, a theme that pervades these hilariously awkward sketches (written by Jacokes and cast). As newlyweds, Jen Hansen and Tommy Simon keep the conflict amicably realistic as they negotiate shared holiday time between their two families. Bryan Lark lends an undercurrent of maliciousness to a composer putting his distinctive spin on a famous Christmas tune. In the longest post-layoff elevator ride ever, Christa Coulter and Chris DiAngelo use much more than words to maximize their excruciating discomfort. And the Christmas Eve Macy’s dressing room is ground zero for Carrie Hall, who enacts the mother of all pubescent humiliations with perfect physical comedy.

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