Lexington's newest theater group, The Rep, headed by co-artistic directors Diana Evans Pulliam and Robyn Peterman-Zahn and executive producer Steve Zahn, opened its inaugural production Friday night at the Lyric Theatre and Cultural Center to a lively, receptive audience.
Smackdown for the Christmas Crown, scripted and directed by Peterman-Zahn, is a holiday variety show using 1950s-style arrangements of familiar songs loosely held together by a predictable song-contest story and a series of amusingly corny jokes. Its gentle mocking of Central Kentucky stereotypes is not too offensive, but one wishes perhaps that Peterman-Zahn had chosen a tone more celebratory than lampooning.
The plot, such as it is, involves a girl-group (The Bobbies) and a boy-group (The Billies) vying for victory in a Christmas talent contest. The seven girls (Cara Braun, Megan McCoy Brown, Haley Fish, Caroline Keegan, Pam Baker McGary, Leah Marie McDivitt and Katie Owen) and six boys (William James Bradley, Hunter Henrickson, Terry L. Keys, Evan Pulliam, Colton Ryan and Ron Wilbur) are all quite talented and put forth a lot of energy. By playing it sweet, they manage to capture the right flavor to deliver engaging entertainment about supposedly ineffectual performers. They all have good voices and sing their numbers with verve. Owen, Bradley, Pulliam, Ryan and Wilbur demonstrate particularly fine performing chops in such pieces as Let It Snow, I'll Be Home for Christmas, It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas and a strangely sexless Baby It's Cold Outside.
To achieve transitions between the songs, Peterman-Zahn wrote in two over-the-top characters, an announcer with a barrage of one-liners about his many ex-wives, played with abandon by Mike Van Zant, and a man desiring to participate in a holiday entertainment at any cost, played with zest by Spencer Christensen, whose Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree is the funniest moment in the show. Although they are not required to do much by way of characterization beyond establishing and maintaining zany personas, the professionalism and charisma with which Van Zant and Christensen inhabit the stage elevate the quality of this show considerably.
There are also about 70 young dancers in Smackdown, and their segments, choreographed by Evans Pulliam, are very well done, humorous and inventive in their conception, tight and polished in their execution. The Rockettes-style Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and March of the (tap-dancing) Wooden Soldiers are especially effective production numbers. Evans Pulliam's witty, creative touch is evident throughout the show, not just in the many choreographed moments, but also in her impressive costume design.
A small combo led by musical director Brock Terry at the keyboard accompanies the show with flair, and Terry has done a good job preparing the many close-harmony numbers. In a few songs, like Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire, the parts are so intricate that the melody is lost; either the arrangements need tweaking, or the singers who have the melody in those pieces need to sing out more.
If you are in the mood for mindless holiday entertainment with nice music, excellent dancing, good production values and topical humor, then you will enjoy Smackdown for the Christmas Crown, which continues through Sunday.
