Photo credit: The Bunny Gumbo Theatre Company
The story of Mary, Joseph and the three wise men is cast as comedy in Doug Jarecki’s ’Twas the Month Before Christmas. The pleasantly anachronistic sitcom features Jarecki as a carpenter named Joe who has married a pregnant woman named Mary. Jarecki delivers a touching complexity to the role of a blue collar guy dealing with circumstances beyond his control. Sara Zientek shows great inner strength as Mary—someone given the burden of a really important gift by a higher power.
A comfy sitcom kind of feel echoes through three different plots. In addition to the story of Joe and Mary, we get the journey of the three wise men as a buddy road trip comedy. The three men are drawn to Bethlehem in the interest of getting a king’s smitten mind off a servant girl he’s quite taken with. There’s also a father-daughter story with Lindsey Gagliano playing the daughter of a man who runs a hotel in Bethlehem. The daughter is ready to take over the business, but her father (a charming John Cramer) isn’t quite ready to allow her to do so.
Jarecki’s dialogue has a clever rhythm to it. Everything flows so smoothly that it’s easy to forget that there’s deeper stuff at work in a story that’s been culled from biblical texts. Jarecki avoids political and religious satire without completely closing the door on deeper comedy. There is depth here for an audience that wishes to find it. There’s also the opportunity for light, character-driven situation comedy based on a popular story for those who want something less heavy.
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Through Dec. 23 at the Next Act Theatre, 255 S. Water St. For tickets, visit nextact.org or call 414-278-0765.
