If you're looking for a laugh this season, Brave New Workshop is the surest bet for laughing until your face hurts. The longest running comedy theater in the nation is back with their annual holiday* show, which is always a favorite. Like years past,
Big Christmas Energy is an irreverent look at everything surrounding the holidays, from awkward family interactions to weird Christmas songs. The uber talented five-person cast of BNW regulars has written about a dozen ridiculously funny sketches (with the help of director/host Caleb McEwen), and performs them with great energy and enthusiasm. There's a little something for everyone (except maybe children - leave them at home), music and nostalgia and double entendres. So if this holiday (or post-election) season has got you down, you might need some
Big Christmas Energy in your life; laughing with a bunch of strangers in a room together has a healing effect.
The show continues through January 31, with
another holiday favorite Family Dinner (a long-form improv show that has run for decades, most recently at the dear departed HUGE Theater)
playing in the first floor space at the Dudley Riggs Theatre Fridays and Saturdays in December.
 |
is there anything cuter than this cast?!
Lauren Anderson, Taj Ruler, Isabella Dunseith, Jon Pumper,
Denzel Belin, and Doug Neithercott (photo courtesy of BNW) |
I couldn't be more pleased with the casting of this year's show. All of the performers (Lauren Anderson, Denzel Belin, Isabella Dunsieth, Doug Neithercott, and Taj Ruler) have performed with BNW before, from a few to a few dozen times. And they're all hilarious, and play well with and off each other. The sketches are all scripted (they sometimes do a bit of improv at the end of the show, but not the night I was there), but feel very loose and playful. They always begin their shows with an original song (accompanied as always by Jon Pumper on keys, who provides a constant soundscape for the show), this one is almost like a Christmas rap, very fast and funny and referential.
Then it's on to the sketches, with video introductions displayed on the two large TV screens (lights, sound, and video by Matthew Vichlach). There are a couple of repeat sketches from last year (the song "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" as a drama, the return of the hippopotamus someone wanted for Christmas), but most are new. Having just seen it the night before, I loved the raunchy spoof of the
Guthrie's annual A Christmas Carol. Other highlights were two music heads at Electric Fetus, an ode to the very Minnesotan pretzel salad (which I've actually never had, although I am familiar with the similar snicker salad and cookie salad), "The Little Match Bitch," some family drama at Applebee's, and Lauren's hilarious and relatable peri-menopause song praising the cold winter weather.
Of course, it's not BNW's Christmas show without their rendition of "The Twelve Days of Christmas," which they save for the end. They've tweaked it a bit from last year (Taj's total glee in singing "All I Want For Christmas Is You"), but we still have the forced leftovers, the stepdad talks, the Delta announcements, the annoying neighbor, and more. Repeated round after round and becoming funnier and funnier each time.
Holiday shows abound in #TCTheater, most of them sweet and sincere and heart-warming.
Big Christmas Energy is not that. But it is a welcome night of laughter. Bring a friend, bring a group, and
start (or continue) a new holiday tradition.
