stage matters / By William Kowinski

Glasnost and More

Thick accents, wild and crazy hijinx in the holiday show

(Dec. 4, 2008)  If you’ve ever been mooned by gypsies in the Les Halles shopping mall in Paris, as I was, you’d know how much fun they can be. In Dell’Arte’s Christmas show, the Glasnost family first appears pulling a gypsy cart, which contains, among other things, the set. As the family members decorate the bare stage, they introduce themselves and explain their purpose: They’re strangers in America, and they’d like to stay. So they’re putting on a show.

That’s about as straightforward as The Glasnost Family Holiday gets. The rest is music, storytelling (both with Christmas themes) and comic family brawls. The Glasnosts appear to have learned how Americans like their entertainment from TV reruns of 1950s variety shows, Rose Bowl Parades and 1980s music videos. The younger family members also adopt rapper poses. The result is reminiscent of everything from musical Borat and those Two Wild and Crazy Guys from the old Saturday Night Live, to an eastern European Fellini movie about a demented Lawrence Welk Christmas special.

GALLERY >

This hour show was created by the ensemble with director Joan Schirle, plus choral director Tyler Olsen and music director Gregg Moore. The actors all create and maintain individually defined characters, and they are all musically accomplished. The comic fights are more sophisticated and acrobatic versions of the Three Stooges, suitable for children.

In this style of holiday entertainment, any subtext may be mostly in the eye of the beholder, but I especially noted those moments in which the weirdness of American customs and customary entertainments are revealed by these earnest but off-kilter outsiders, “maximizing their minimum skills.” For example, the family is enthusiastic but perhaps not always clear on the appropriate effect, as when they push the rhythm of a particular Christmas song to make it sound more threatening than festive.

The ethnic stereotypes are relatively gentle, although the accents are sometimes impenetrable. The onstage narrative is more a pastiche than a story, but it all adds up to a good time, particularly for children — though there didn’t seem to be many in the opening night audience at the Carlo, that’s very likely to be remedied when the show hits the road this week.

Rumor has it that there’s a lot more about this ensemble elsewhere in this issue, so let’s move on.

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On a recent Saturday night, Jeff DeMark brought his particular brand of storytelling to an overflow crowd at Muddy’s Hot Cup in Arcata. He told some new stories along with selections from his fully-formed shows, accompanied by the UKEsperience ukulele band. The combination was often magical. DeMark’s stories are funny, and they seem to touch a chord with the local audience as shared experience and nostalgia. But they also penetrate with a poetic humanity, and this versatile ensemble of two ukes, electric bass and drums added to all these effects, but particularly the warmth.

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