Santa Gets Killed By Puppets Again This Year

Once again the puppets return as Carte Blanche Theater plays host to Neil Haven's dark holiday comedy Who Killed Santa? The independent production makes it to the stage of the studio theatre having survived several holiday seasons.

It's been staged elsewhere. The local production has a longevity in part due to the fact that the majority of the characters are puppets, for which we have to thank Dan Katula. 

I have seen the show quite a lot. I was invited to see the show again. And again I liked it. I feel the need to justify why. The alternate endings facilitated by elves from the audience are kind of a cute gimmick, but they're not the real appeal here. 

The comedy involves beloved holiday characters who turn out to be not quite as wholesome as popular culture would have us believe. Funny, yes, but not something that has any business being funny more than once.  As humorous as some of the lines are added as funny as some of the situations are, the script really isn't that inventive. I haven't seen a whole lot by Neil Haven, but I believe I've seen enough to know that this is not his best work. Oddly enough, the piece he wrote that sticks with me more than any other is a short he wrote about ducks hanging out in the fountain at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.  That comedy was a lot more interesting and had a lot more originality than this one. I'd like to see that one given a feature length treatment. It' a fun script . . . once. I felt like I was dragging myself back to the show for a third or fourth time. 

All that aside, I still like Who Killed Santa? having seen it multiple times. And the reason I still like it has a lot to do with the fact that the cast is doing remarkable things with the script--tricking it into being funny more often than not. Much of this year's cast has been there through out the years. They've worked with the puppets for a long time. They've worked with the characters for a long time. They've worked with the lines for a long time. And it's fun to see such fun talent paired up with the puppets again.

Amy Geyser returns to the crutch once more in the role of the perpetually young Tiny Tim. Haven's script has the sympathetic weakling transformed from sympathy over possibly mortality to sympathy towards the pangs of eternal and eternally sickly youth. There is deeper comic potential for this sort of thing--the popular culture's need for a physical embodiment of wretchedness and what that need to does to the physical embodiment itself. The potential is never really gone into in any kind of serious depth here, which is fine because it's not really going for that kind of comedy. I can't help but get the feeling that if it was it'd be a more interesting script, though. This type of thing would be really funny to explore. But with an ensemble this large you just don't have the time for it. 

That I would be thinking about this at all is proof that Geyser's performance is really compelling for a grown woman with a puppet in a light adult comedy. She's good. And it's nice to see her return to the crutch.

Liz Shipe returns once more to the role of Chastity , the Little Drummer Girl. The public demands more female Christmas characters and so they end up with one who has to be ultra-sexualized. Once again, we're okay as a culture with a woman entering a largely male community if she's trading in some way on her sexuality. It's satire that works really great the first time you see it. Any charm in the character beyond that first time is thanks in great part to a wonderful performance by Shipe. She leads the cast and the biggest musical number of the show which is Haven's surprisingly successful attempt at turning the pop tune "Lady Marmalade" (popularized in 2001 by Christina Aguilera and company) into a Christmas song. There is a very, very narrow percentage of the population of the world that has the kind of vocal capability that Aguilera does. Liz Shipe may not quite get there but she does a fabulous vocal job with the song. Aside from that, she deftly pulls the character away from the flat , stereotypical bimbo territory that it would almost assuredly lurk over towards in less talented hands.

[Mild Spoiler in the next paragraph.] 

This year we get Brittany McDonald in the role of Rudolph, the alcohol swilling reindeer. I really, really loved Sophia Dhaliwal in the role that she had for so many years. It is hard for me to see somebody else with that puppet, but it is going to be someone else I'm really happy that it's McDonald. She has great comic instincts. Here she's playing the character pretty low-key until key scenes pop-up. I love what she does with the extended drunken monologue involving certain revelations. Playing much of the rest of it relatively low-key really gives that monologue a chance to make a comic impression in a way that it hasn't quite managed in the past.

[spoiler ends.]

Nate Press returns to the role of the little lovable slush-head frosty.Haven's script has the character rendered as a socially awkward person with a heart of gold. Again, this character wouldn't really work without tremendously endearing performance by Press. Once again I see him in this role and it's kind of shocking to contrasted against his performance as a cold-blooded serial killer in Aaron Kopec's Murder Castle. Press has versatility and sophistication that seems to go well beyond much of what he ends up doing onstage. 

Rick Pendzich rounds out the puppet cast as The Little Drummer Boy all grown-up into a professional musician. Pendzich Has plenty of experience on some rather large stages. He played Cohen in the Skylight's big stage production of RENT a while back. He continues to get regular work in those kinds of circles but it's a lot of fun to see what he can do in a more intimate environment. He has a very sophisticated kind of comic delivery that is coupled well here with a great familiarity with his puppet and a real sense of natural inventiveness with it. Pendzich's clever sense of humor and the character's deviation from standard holiday stereotypes continue to make the drummer my favorite character in the ensemble.

[really, really mild spoiler, but only kinda sorta in the next paragraph . . . ]

Bo Johnson serves as the non-puppet center to the cast in the role of Santa and a few others. I don't know exactly why, but I've started to realize that he reminds me of a midwestern American version of Eric Idle from Monty Python. The fact  that he ends up in drag a couple of times here is probably a lot of it, but there's also a very similar approach to comedy common to both actors that makes the one remind me of the other. Both can be found doing solid work in some really bizarre ends of larger ensemble comedy shows. Both end up supporting the action so well that you don't always realize how much work they're actually doing. And both make doing that kind of work look easy. It isn't. Johnson has a great deal of experience in comedy onstage and you know he's only living up to a fraction of his ability here, but he carries it so well that it doesn't seem to matter. 

[spoiler ends . . . you're on your own now . . . ]

In any case . . . while it is far from being entirely flat, Who Killed Santa? draws considerable strength from a really good cast. If Haven continues to maintain a cast of this caliber in the years to come, there's no reason this comedy can't have a long and healthy continued string of holiday manifestations into the next decade. It's welcome addition to the annual holiday show line-up in Milwaukee.

Neil Haven, Bo Johnson and Dan Katula's production of Who Killed Santa runs through December 30th at Carte Blanceh Studios on 1024 South 5th Street. For ticket reservations, visit Who Killed Santa? online.