GET TOGETHER with family or any longtime friends, and suddenly you remember what the carols and holiday cards leave out: people with issues. Theatre Q does a good job of celebrating the bitchy parts of Christmas in Dale Albright's original play Keep the Yuletide Gay. In this case, five friends (the Single Belles, with gay friend Warren as the fifth belle) get together every year for Christmas dinner. As hostess Holly (Chloë Bronzan, meticulous in her prim, conservative dress) argues with Fran (Safiya Arnaout in careless jeans and flannel) over
the table setting, they present the seasonal wonderment: How have we remained friends
for so long?
The question becomes more puzzling when Joy (Carlye Pollack) steps into the mix. Chic, classy and dressed in form-fitting Santa-red satin, Joy instantly picks up her longtime verbal sparring with Fran and persists unapologetic: "We spend all year working on our Christmas banter." When all is said and done, it's the friction between Joy and Fran that makes the show so enjoyable. Overfed and undermotivated, Fran gives Joy plenty of imperfections to work with, and Pollack has eyebrow combinations for every pejorative in the dictionary of disdain. In fact, it's Joy and her delightfully snotty facial expressions that provide the definitive take on the evening's events, with the help of her nasty commentary: "If you want hair on a chest, I'm sure Fran can spare a handful."
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The other female girlfriend is the syrupy blonde Poppy (Sara Elizabeth Janzen, looking appropriately ditsy in her plaid miniskirt and high black boots decked in ribbon-red). By the time we meet fifth belle Warren (Alan Kaiser), we've got nearly an act's worth of hearsay on him, all of it suggesting he's the quintessentially fab guy with the queer eye. Yet, when Warren first comes through the door, his behavior is macho as a construction worker, and Act 1 ends with him planting a forcible Clark Gable kiss on Holly's lips.
In Act 2, everything goes zany, and the double entendres fly. Though the play maintains its amusing banter, the tone and story line grow as muddled as Warren under the spell of Madame Stratosphere. Fran has hired the Madame (a totally underused Connie Nelson) to cast a bogus spell turning Warren straight, but, oops, Madame uses real mojo. Unfortunately, after a spectacular entrance, mystically snatching little somethings from the air, Madame Stratosphere is soon put to rest on the couch. Even in her dazed stupor the turbaned crone dressed in dazzling fabrics is fun to watch as she keels over in slow motion inch by inch. More of Madame might have opened the belles' social circle up to humorous outside commentary, not to mention a little substance.
Though admirably played by Caleb Hoffert, Warren's surprise lover, the Santa-clad Chad, is pretty much a throwaway character. And Kaiser is hard to situate, either as a gay or straight man. Nevertheless, the show comes out in the plus column. Set designer Ron Gasparinetti pulls off another unique parlor space with a decor of skewed geometry—trapezoidal fireplace, slanting windows, a zigzag of irregular angles on the two-dimensional plastic Christmas tree. Some of the potentially richest scenes take place offstage—Warren's transformation, his make-up scene with Chad. But in this way, the play puts up a sort of anti-family holiday snapshot, women gathered in one room with Auntie or Grandma dozing on the couch.
Keep the Yuletide Gay, a Theatre Q presentation, plays Thursday and Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 2pm through Dec. 30 at Dragon Theater, 535 Alma St., Palo Alto. Tickets are $15-$20. (415.429.2456)
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