Holiday Alchemy
By this point, I would’ve been dragging myself to my fourteenth holiday show of the season. By this point I would’ve dreaded having to go through the whole ordeal of another Christmas story. This wasn’t just any Christmas show, though. This was The Show: the first production to inhabit the newly opened Alchemist Theatre on south K.K. I had been pleasantly invited to the new space earlier in the week and hopped a #15 down to Bay View at my first opportunity. After ordering a beer from the bar, I was shown around the space. Talking to the Alchemist people (the alchemists?) one gets the impression that there is finally a group of people just as passionate about providing a space for theatre as so many others in town are about actually performing.
Resting comfortably across the street from the Bay View library, The Alchemist Theatre is pretty impressive for a converted space. One side is a fully functioning bar, which will be opening for business in the January. The other side is a small theatre space featuring what just might be the third most comfortable theatre seats in the city. (More on that later.) They are converted multiplex-style seats complete with cup holder in case you want to drink during the show.
The Show itself was an unexpectedly good end to the season. Sketch comedy is rarely more than a few laughs, but The Show’s holiday program transcended this a bit in places. The local sketch comedy group (consisting of Doug Jarecki, Karen Estrada, Jason Powell, Mathew Huebsch and Andrea Moser) may have been a bit limited by the holiday theme of the show, but, on the whole, it was surprisingly bearable. It opened with some reasonably clever superhero-themed Christmas carols. What followed was a pleasant mix of reasonably good comedy. One of the more interesting bits was an office comedy sketch involving Santa’s middle-management elves at the North Pole. It was a cute premise, but it never quite lived up to its potential. One of the better sketches was a cleverly offbeat bit involving a gift exchange between ninjas. One dare not give a lousy gift when honor can be brutal. Funny stuff, but only to the fraction of the audience that might understand.
The program featured a few improv bits as well. For the most part, these bits went off precisely the way improv bits normally do: the audience is asked for suggestions that are fit into a comedy bit and mild laughter ensues. The final improv skit of the Thursday evening show had some real comedy in it, though. The Dickensian Christmas comedy skit featured mention of the magic of the Christmas Smiting Ornament—a surprisingly durable idea to have come out of improv comedy. This holiday season, may the Smiting Ornament come and smite away all of your anxieties. Okay, so maybe you had to be there. . . .
The Show’s Christmas program closed. Next, The Alchemist Theatre welcomes Alamo Basement and Insurgent Theatre with their production of Berzerk!—a chaotic march of ten-minute plays that was so good last year at Darling Hall.
Posted by rbickerstaff on 12/23 at 12:05 PM