A more deliberately focused version of 'A Very Phoenix Xmas' debuts

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"A Christmas Carol" deserves a satirical poke. 

 For nearly two decades, we've gotten used to the nutty fruitcake style of "A Very Phoenix Xmas," a workable blend of ingredients from various sources under curation by one or two certified artistic minds. 

These staples of the Phoenix Theatre schedule are never  in the style of something that is surreptitiously regifted, like the stale fruitcakes of legend. Each production stands on its own, and the variety of casting since the aughties has made return visits mandatory amid the welter of "Nutcracker"s and "Christmas Carol"s and "Yuletide Celebration"s. 

Vondrell Sisters audition inappropriately.
The new version, titled "Sleigh, Queen, Sleigh," takes a turn toward the auteur theory of film-making, with director/playwright Zack Neiditch at the center.  The creative team spotlights the Zach&Zack pairing (with Zach Rosing as sight-and-sound guru)  known from Fringe productions and quirky spectacles like the "The Rocky Horror Show" and "Hedwig and the Angry Inch." To that team comes songwriter Paige Scott, who worked memorably with Neiditch and Rosing ages ago (2014) on "The Great Bike Race" and has many creative credits of her own as well. 

The cast comprises five gifted clowns, all of them notable for a variety of facial expressions amplifying  every line, gesture,  and choreographic turn required of them. They are Suraj Choudhary, Samantha J. Lewis, Craig Underwood, Cara Wilson and Christine Zavakos. Their individuality is intense, which is confirmed by a series of solo videos titled "My Best Christmas Ever." The stories strain credulity, but in a marginally credible way.  These are, after all, the holidays shortly to come upon us, out of which the most head-spinning blends of fact and fable dependably emerge.

Speaking of which,  the skepticism of young urbanites in the 21st century is an understandable default position for this show. Thus, when the time machine vividly suggested by Rosing's projections, rewinding chronology in the context of American pop culture at its blandest, places us in 1961, we meet the chastely adorable Vondrell Sisters auditioning with holiday songs that turn out to be beyond edgy. Lewis and Zavakos, singing  Scott-Neiditch toxic concoctions in sweet, pubescent harmony, are nothing like Patience and Prudence. 

Song-and-dance men tout the reality of Santa.

There are other counter-cultural notes richly threaded ehrough the songs and sketches. Another Scott-Neiditch song, "He's Real," has Choudhary and Zavakos as a 1920s-style vaudeville duo raking Santa Claus myths over the coals in a manner possibly derived also from hiphop and Tom Lehrer. 

"An Influencer Christmas" is the most trenchant commentary on contemporary social-media trends. With its well-designed technical aplomb, the sketch shows  a commercially compromised celebration of the season under strain. A family struggles to maintain its unanimous project of selling merchandise online, yielding to an eventually poignant affirmation of its truer bond. With love winning out, dreaming succeeds streaming.

Similarly, the pressure for news media to follow the reigning cultural narrative puts a reporter's spin on her interview with the three Wise Men in 1 A.D. Trump-era xenophobia chips away at the story they tell, with Underwood as the most imposing of the Magi interrupting the spokes-king's response to raised-eyebrow questions from the Bethlehem TV station. The traveling royalty are outfitted in some of Kristin Renee Boyd's most elaborate costume designs, reminding me of the interplanetary couture of
Sun Ra and his Arkestra. 

"The Inn on Methuselah Pass" is thus  the closest the show comes to touching upon "the reason for the season," but I mention this only to say that religious and spiritual themes in "A Very Phoenix Xmas" have always been touched upon gingerly. The show ends on an ensemble song that strives to assure everybody that "Sleigh, Queen, Sleigh!" really does have a heart:  Scott's "Never Too Late" puts forth everyone's duty and right to realize themselves, whatever obstacles to doing so they are forced to soar above. It's something we can always hope for.

As the French essayist Montaigne reminds us: "Oh, what a brave faculty is hope, which...usurps infinity, immensity, eternity. Nature has given us an amusing toy there."  Neiditch, Rosing and their more than able colleagues have garbed that brave faculty brilliantly, offering us amusing toys all their own through Dec. 21.


[Photos by Zach Rosing]








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