Le Petit Theatre Christmas showcase makes holiday fun "bareable."
Broadway's Lauren Molina and Nick Cearley return to Le Petit Theatre in The Skivvies: Best in Snow just in time for the winter solstice. After criss-crossing the U.S. during a month-long whirlwind national tour, the final curtain falls in New Orleans in this French Quarter showcase at the Le Peitie Theatre.
The duo walks on stage in baggy reindeer onesies that are quickly dispelled with the rationale that New Orleans is just so hot, then suddenly their coverings are shed revealing immodest—albeit festive—underwear and lingerie. The performers flexed more than their vocal chords as they perform mashed-up versions of holiday favorites, while introducing guests in various stages of undress along the way. Minimally clad performers in winter is not the only unusual aspects of the show. Musical accompaniment includes unlikely instruments such as the ukulele, electric cello, glockenspiel, and an other unexpected instruments.
The Skivvies: Best in Snow also features celebrity special guests adding wild antics, packed with big voices and meandering harmonies—but no pants. Beyond Molina and Clearey, the tour's final perfomance tonight on Thursday, December 21 features guests Kathleen Monteleone, Bryan Batt, Alexis Marceaux, Sam Craft, Arsène Delay, and Debbie Davis.
Molina (Broadway's Rock of Ages, Sweeney Todd) and Cearley (All Shook Up national tour) met as castmates during the 2003 tour of Just So Stories. Their subsequent friendship evolved into musical collaborators and they began performing together in the New York City—with clothes on. Their personal as the underdressed Skivvies became a YouTube sensation in 2012 with their unique covers of artists like Robyn, Carole King, and Rihanna. The YouTube videos led to sold-out live shows nationally, including Best in Snow.
And although Christmas comes but once a year, The Skivvies' are releasing their first holiday recording of the 2022 tour to cherish the memory well into the new year and enjoy for holidays to come. Among the songs featured are "I Touch My Elf," "Santa's Baby," "Your Body is a Walkin' in a Winter Wonderland," and "Christmastime Is Here/Somewhere in My Memory."
Join Le Petit Theatre for the group's final performance of their fun, outrageous, and naked holiday show of this season. While The Nutcracker, A Christmas Carol, and LPO's Elf concerts are all wonderful theatre-going experiences, The Skivvies is an alternative holiday tradition waiting to happen—tonight.
The Play That Goes Wrong is a fitting start to Le Petit Theatre's first full-season performance since an unforeseen global pandemic shuttered the playhouse—who saw that coming?
The comedy is structured with a show-within-a-show format. While Le Petit Theatre's audience is attending The Show That Goes Wrong, the fictional play referenced in the real play's title is in fact Murder at Haversham Manor, a 1920s English thriller in the vein of an Agatha Christie whodunnit.
In The Play That Goes Wrong, The Haversham Manor's production is performed by the fictitious fledgling Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society theater company visiting from England.
The show is reminiscent of 1982 play-with-a-play farce Noises Off. While Noises Off showed both the catastrophe the audience sees in Act I, with Act II revealing the back-of-house shenanigans same fictional play's repeated Act I, Goes Wrong is solidly from the audience's viewpoint with Act II taking the disastrous accident-prone production to unexpected—but hilarious—lows.
Like Noises Off, the brilliance of Goes Wrong is not in the blocking of characters to make their cues, but seemingly more difficult, but rather the precision, agility, and comedic timing to be interntionally off cue and not in position believably, while being spot on in reality. In other words: being in position to not be in position. And the cast pulls this off with professionalism and impressive reactions that sell the whole show.
Too many aspects of the show would be spoliers so suffice to say—true to the title—almost nothing goes anywhere near correctly. The elaborate stage set is barely finished with pieces and props misplaced or simply missing. The actors, immobilized by staging and memorized script are hilariously inept at improvising their parts, and are determined that the show must go on, doing their level best—even when being level isn't possible. The production loses most of its case to the point that stage hands and techs are absorbed into the limelight. Unfortunate for the characters but humorously for the audience, they become consumed with new found stardom, then are reluctant to relinquish the stage. The real questions become: who will make it to the end of the show, will there be any of the set left, and who was the muderer (and does the audience even care at that point)?
Strong performances by the entire cast, with standout scene-stealing acting from Benjamin Dogherty as a happy-to-be-on-stage dead body / caretaker; Sora as the disgruntled tech master turned starlet; and Yvette Bourgeois and Cat Wilkinson as the the diva and stagehand-turned-diva, literally battling out for the spot light between whenever their characters can remain conscious.
Winner of Best New Comedy at the 2015 Lawrence Olivier Awards when it opened in London, writers Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields bring the madcap pacing at warp speed.
The farce was originated by the producers who staged Avenue Q (Best Musical beating out Wicked for the 2004 Tony Award) and Something Rotten, as well as action film producer J.J. Abrams, "who we can only assume lost a bet" according to the real-life show's promotions.
The Play That Goes Wrong is an invigoratingly fun, laugh-filled way for Le Petit Theatre to begin this season. It runs through November 6.
