Best Damn Holiday Show

The second Go Comedy! original holiday sketch show, Best Damn Holiday Show, is largely grounded in the here and now. Current events figure prominently in the production's few dozen sketches; add to that the severity of Michigan's particular hardships, and this is one holiday offering that looks for its humor in dark, bleak places.

Framing the nearly 90-minute production is a pair of sketches in which the cast's attempts to sing an original Christmas tune are repeatedly shut down by imperious killjoys — as the Go Comedy! space used to be a Secretary of State office, bureaucratic equal-opportunity political correctness still applies. The song's repeatedly amended, increasingly vague lyrics are quite sharp, pushing the absurd concept to its limit; it's an effective mechanism to set up a show that strives to be about more than just Christmas. Between these bookends lie much more diverse characters and places, but the topical feel largely remains. Rumination on the lousy presents of a down economy, a visit with the rescued Chilean miners, and a sketch pitching hot new toys to kids of various stereotyped Michigan cities deny escapism, priming the viewer for a scathing closing medley that skewers everything in sight.

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The Current

Magenta Giraffe Theatre has its first world-premiere production in The Current, by new playwright Sean Paraventi. The story of four friends, a few gallons of tequila, and one memorable bachelorette party is given appropriate preamble by sound designer Frannie Shepherd-Bates's pre-show playlist: circa-1990s Now That's What I Call Music! hits that invite ironic appreciation, a parade of exceedingly popular, irritating, overplayed, yet irresistibly addictive party tunes. Viewers raised on these songs might outwardly groan at them, but they secretly know all the lyrics. As directed by Molly McMahon, this estrogen-packed show has a similar feeling of succumbing to what we might profess to resist.

Mary (Jaye Stellini) is about to be married, and the first stop of her bachelorette party is a visit to the psychic Madame Camille (Shepherd-Bates). Not only does Mary get a reading, so does each of her three friends, although most appear to lend little credence to the practice. Indeed, the unfamiliar surroundings invite rampant nay-saying, primarily from skeptic Angie (Angie Kane Ferrante) and cynic Sharon (Kirsten Knisely), the latter of whom wishes loudly to be somewhere else. Both the relationships and the action of the play fare much better when the characters buy into the psychic's predictions; in particular, the pure faith of doe-eyed Darlene (Jaclyn Strez) is injected with both humor and unfathomable sweetness, and her scenes invite a camaraderie that's quite engaging.

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A Strange Disappearance of Bees

Family, community, devotion, and apiculture are all given their due in playwright Elena Hartwell's A Strange Disappearance of Bees. The world-premiere production by Detroit Repertory Theatre is a strong union of script, direction, and tech, creating a safe-feeling yet emotionally vulnerable journey whose honey-drenched heart rarely skips a beat.

Hartwell's script uses bees and beekeeping as a framework as well as a loose metaphor for the events of the play. The central role of bees in the agriculture industry, the symbiotic relationship between the potentially deadly insects and their cultivators, the power of the female in community dynamics, and even the emergence of colony collapse disorder, a real-life threat to bees that lends the show its title, are discussed in monologue form by beekeeper Rud (Milfordean Luster). Time will tell how this highly topical entry point ages, but the connection between Rud's brief lectures and the organically unfolding events of the play are largely complementary. In fact, as directed by Hank Bennett, each element of the story feels integral, which is no small feat.

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The Hot Mess Chronicles 2

After last year's The Hot Mess Chronicles, a Viking funeral of sorts for its former Halloween mainstay, the Abreact comes back to the well this year with The Hot Mess Chronicles 2. This installment features four brand-new short plays, selected through a submissions process in collaboration with Planet Ant Theatre. The varied offerings are presented episodically by an ensemble cast of five, without a unifying theme or thread; this way, the show is able to be both harmlessly funny and soul-stirringly creepy, some to greater effect than others.

The production's first act is plainly its weakest, with two pieces full of quick, short scenes that require long, dark pauses to set up their sight gags and cutaways. "The ‘Screwed’ Tape Letters," an update of the adjacently named C.S. Lewis novel, concerns a minion new to Hell unable to claim the soul of a criminally boring human (Josh Campos and Brian Papandrea, respectively, who also penned the play). This interpretation doesn't add much perspective to the story, serving mostly as a vehicle for some running jokes and absurd-death gags; the highlight is James Nanys as a wasted, laid-back Satan, who’s somehow threatening even as he maintains a level of relaxation that rivals The Big Lebowski’s Dude. Next is "The Way to Win Over Annie" by Steven Blackwell, a romance told in flashbacks with a delicate Sarah Galloway as the title character, the seemingly heaven-sent girl. Whatever foreshadowing is inherent in the script is swallowed by extremely casual staging of the expository present-day scenes — the bleak and strangely funny ending is indeed a surprise, but sadly not of the should've-seen-it-coming variety. Director Mike McGettigan seems trapped in very literal staging for these two pieces; the lack of fluidity saps the scenes of polish and causes some unexpected drag.

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Best of Friends

The Purple Rose Theatre Company's world premiere of Best of Friends certainly succeeded at blasting away my expectations. Everything from the warm and fuzzy title to the so-happy portraits adorning Vincent Mountain's rich Pottery Barn catalog set to the opening notes of convivial laughter is carefully suggestive of a real, honest, touchy-feely journey of discovery and friendship. Then the actors start speaking, and the ensuing laugh-baiting eighty-five minutes unravel a savagely mean, ruthless underbelly that almost punishes every preconceived notion of niceness. Indeed, playwright Jeff Daniels's new comedy is like putting bugs together in a jar and shaking it up to watch them fight.

Told in a fluid, half-narrative style, the single-act play gives the viewer entry into the living rooms of two married couples. Privileged auto executive John Martin (Alex Leydenfrost) and his bitter lush of a wife, Beth (Michelle Mountain), fall halfway into and then unreservedly out of a friendship with rough-edged mechanic Ken Porter (Matthew David) and his easily influenced wife, Hannah (Rhiannon Ragland). An apparently harmonious quartet at first, some potentially unremarkable incidents drive an immediate, irreparable wedge between the Martins and Porters, who fully morph into scheming and vengeful monsters gleefully holding up the pretense of friendship in order to keep their enemies closer. What follows is part childish prank escalation, part upper versus upper-middle class war, and all a highly concentrated embodiment of the frenemy concept. Even as it becomes clear these couples never liked each other much, even as it becomes questionable that they are capable of liking anybody, both sides collectively come back for more, claws at the ready.

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