Theatre in REVIEW • Pit & Balcony Presents Two Regional Premiers Guaranteed to Brighten Your Holiday Season

If you’re looking for a double-shot of holiday spirit to usher you merrily down the road of merriment & fellowship leading up to Christmas Day, Pit & Balcony Community Theatre has scored back-to-back home runs with a pair of contemporary theatrical productions you won’t want to miss.

Last weekend marked the regional premier of The Holiday Channel Christmas Movie Wonderthon along with the debut of the After Dark series production of the one-woman tour-de-force known as  Who’s Holiday! - a pair of ambitious and thoroughly enjoyable exercises in theatrical entertainment that offer something totally different than the standard fare of repetitive holiday shows that surface each year throughout the region with minor variations on a similar theme.

With the last series of performances scheduled for Friday through Sunday, December 16-17-18th, both productions debuted to nearly sold-out crowds and sparked with the symbiotic exchange between cast and audience engaging with fresh material that was seamlessly delivered, which created a palpable excitement in the air much like the way a fresh coat of snow sparkles as it slowly falls to the ground.

Featuring a perfectly paired cast of veterans and relative newcomers, The Holiday Channel Christmas Movie Wonderthon offers a hilarious journey that begins with the premise of a pair narrators - acting as liaisons of sorts between actors & audience - guiding us through a series of six different Hallmark meets Netflix holiday movies all happening at the same time.

While seemingly chaotic on the surface, this approach of seamlessly splicing together six different stories all held together by sharing similar themes creates a tapestry of shared epiphanies about human connection that are as thoroughly delightful as they are touching and amusing.

Under the direction of Jeff List, the stage is transformed into a giant television set as narrators Wesley Cook and Elijah Feinauer  deftly guide us through these interwoven vignettes, with each story sharing similar complications peppered with brisk snappy dialogue as the narrators drive the flow between stage and audience.

Standout performances from Trashan Donald, Hannah Duford, Nathan Hanley, and Kevin Profitt along with the rest of the 16-member cast, underscore the importance of timing in a comedy of this nature, especially with divergent narratives carrying a similar theme all happening together at the same time.  While this could easily devolve into chaos, thanks to the solid blocking and professionalism of director and cast, the action and actors flow together like an effortless comedic ballet of synchronicity and timing.

As for the Pit’s bonus Christmas production of Who’s Holiday!, enough praise cannot be given to Mandee Wunderlee and Barbie Carr -  the two women who originally were set to co-star and co-direct each other in this one-woman meditation on holiday loneliness and the importance of giving people second-chances.  While they did co-direct one another, unfortunately a family emergency prohibited Carr from performing at last Friday's performance, leaving Wunderlee to handle both performances. 

Wunderlee did a bang-up job characterizing the delightful and self-deprecating humor of Cindy Lou Who. Her raunchy riffs on the childhood character in  Dr. Seuss’s classic yuletide tale, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, was delivered with an infectious precision.  Little Cindy Lou is now all grown up and has become a bottle-blonde adult who has seen better days.  On Christmas Eve, waiting for friends to arrive, she engages with the audience by relating all the twisted turn of events her life has taken since that fateful night many years ago when she had her first fateful encounter with the Grinch; and now in her 40’s she manifests these traumas as a chain-smoking, swearing, possible ex-convict trying to get her life back in order.

The exchange between Wunderlee and the audience is thoroughly enjoyable, especially considering that all of the dialogue is delivered in perfect Seussical rhyme - a 70-minute ‘rap’ if you will revealing not only her ribald nature, but expressing the need for openness, candor, and honesty that drives Cindy-Lou, while also ingratiating her into our consciousness  through the way she weaves the threads of her plight into our heartstrings.

Especially enjoyable is the impromptu unpredictability that occurs when Cindy Lou surveys the audience and selects one of the audience members to join her on the stage for a holiday cocktail before her other guests arrive - a moment of improvisational brilliance that would be a scene-spoiler if anything more was revealed.

Do yourself and your family a favor and do not miss either of these final performances - it’s a holiday gift of live theatre at its finest that if you open yourself to the experience will be sure to give you many fond memories for years to come.

The final performance of ‘Who’s Holiday’ happens this Saturday, December 17th at 7:30 PM.

The final performances of ‘’The Holiday Channel Christmas Movie Wonderthon’ happen this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, December 16-17-18. Friday’s performance is at 7:30 PM and Saturday & Sunday performances are at 3:00 PM. 

Tickets can be purchased at PitandBalconytheatre.com and also at the door.