Another Satisfying Cudahy Caroler Production

After a brief Yuletide hiatus with a bawdy Dickens parody, the In Tandem Theater Company returns this year to an old holiday favorite with A Cudahy Caroler Christmas. Having  covered nearly a decade of theater in Milwaukee, I've probably seen this show nearly more often than any other show other than the Rep's annual production of A Christmas Carol.

Over the years, I've built up some something of love/hate relationship with Anthony Wood's local flavor comedy. And over the years I've seen the script staged enough time to realize that while Wood seems to have gone to great lengths to make as many references to local culture and local culture as possible, at the heart of this at times cloying comedy there is the pulse of a pleasantly irreverent and offbeat alternative to traditional holiday fare.

Beyond the local flavor of the comedy, the real appeal of this show is the fact that is comedy taken seriously. The characters aren't flat stereotypes. Some of them come kind of close ,but they're NOT flat stereotypes. They're not written to be and they're not performed as such. Is a very real people who are performed as very real people. Likewise the songs, which could come off as weak parodies of traditional Christmas tunes, are performed with with an enthusiasm that transcends their ubiquity. In many ways, listening to the old holiday  standards with alternative lyrics make one listen to them and pay attention to them in a whole new way. It can feel like hearing them again for the first time. Of course, having seen this show multiple times, I find myself hearing traditional renditions of holiday music and hearing the Cudahy Caroler lyrics running through my head. I suspect I'm not the only one who does os. For better and worse, Cudahy Caroler has become part of Milwaukee theatre's holiday identity. Far more hip than theRep's annual A Christmas Carol. It may be crude and vulgar in so many places, but that doesn't make it any less heartfelt.

Chris Flieller reprises his role as Stasch, the widower who is looking to try to get an old group of South Side carolers back together for one more performance which only happens to be a cable access TV appearance. For one half of the team in charge of In Tandem Theatre, Chris Flieller would not be performing this role if he didn't want to. He has performed the role an unsettling number of times. The many, many performances don't seem to have diminished his enthusiasm for the role at all. Like all of the returning cast, he seems to really love what he's going here. Here his performance is fed by a cast that includes some new talent.

Among the new talent is Samantha Paige in the role of the hairdresser Wanda. She agrees to perform with the carolers one last time in exchange for a decent date with him. Paige lends a pleasantly sensual energy to the role which is paired with a really great sense of comic timing and delivery. As written by Wood, the character is about as close as the script comes to a true stereotype. And he doesn't give her a whole lot of genuinely funny things to say. But Page manages to make this role work in a way that it really shouldn't. A man hungry woman looking for love? Okay it's kind of a weak character but Paige makes it charming. 

Joe Fransee appears here in the role of Stasch's son Zeke. Fransee has a leading male quality about him that the character hasn't really received before. It transforms the character into something that's a lot more dynamic than he has been in the past . He's just some kid who smitten with a girl who is a part of the Carolers. He seems to have been written to be a little more than a slightly growing adolescent, but Fransee gives a little bit more depth than that. And it doesn't hurt that he's got really good comic instincts.

Good debut performances are met with number of decent returns. Of particular note here is Alison Mary Forbes in the role of the tipsy librarian Trixie. The fact that Wood is playing drunkenness as comedy could not be in poorer taste. This is the type of thing that went out of style in the mid-20th century. And it hasn't really been funny since. Except here. The drunken librarian is funny. Really, Really funny. And it really has no business being funny at all. And I have a feeling that a lot of the reason why it's funny here is the fact that Allison Mary Forbes is capable of rendering a comment performance that is charming and sympathetic. Forbes is endearing enough as the character that we're not laughing at alcohol abuse, we're laughing at the drunkenness. It probably sounds like it's splitting hairs, but there's really a huge difference there.

The Saturday night of opening weekend, Forbes had managed to inadvertently steel was scene by drinking a box of wine in the background. Her performance of the parody of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen received the strongest applause of that evening. During intermission, people who seemed to be seeing it for the first time were talking amongst themselves about how much they were enjoying the show. Forbes' character got mentioned quite a lot during intermission. Audiences love Forbes as Trixie. 

Also making a return appearance is Nathan Wesselowski in the role of Stasch's ex-friend Pee-wee., the owner of the bowling lane that we Carolers rehearse in. Wesselowski is a minimalist in the fact of comedy, preferring to let some of the best lines in Wood's script speak for themselves. (Pee Wee gets some of the best lines in the show.) 

In previous years, the show has played bigger venues than the intimate space of the 10th Street Theatre. (One year it hit the spacious stage of the Marcus Center's Vogel Hall.) It's nice to see the comedy here play out on a much smaller and cozier place. The comedy and the melody are that much more intense in a space as cozy as the 10th Street Theatre. 

This years Cudahy Caroler Christmas runs November 30th - January 5th at the theatre on 628 North 10th Street. For ticker reservations, call 414-271-1371 or visit In Tandem online.