CNN iReport

It all begins so inauspiciously, innocently, comically.

   We take our seats and take notice - an electric keyboard (a portent of doom for me) - a drum set (yeah baby!) and a six-string electric violin (looks like something from The Jetsons..hmmm? interesting) and then suddenly the members of Groovelily, a trio of musicians who according to the program "ignore the boundaries laid down by words like rock, folk, jazz and pop", enter and take their places.

  With no time to waste they begin to play a riff advising us to turn off our cell phones and unwrap our candy wrappers.  The audience ripples in laughter realizing this is what is usually spoken in mildly prosecutorial tones before any performance, anywhere in the world these days.   So we perk up, open up and welcome the trio with applause and bonhomie ready to laugh and sing our troubles away.

   It is then we receive the first of many subliminal, self-sabotaging presages that are woven into the book:  "Welcome to Striking 12, the holiday non-spectacular, non-extravaganza.  Our story begins with a man who by December 31st is no longer in a holiday mood."  Mr. Grumpy to whom she is alluding speaks out for himself, "I am no longer in a holiday mood."

  The text, co-authored by two of the performers, Valerie Vigoda (who also plays the electric violin and plays all the women folk of the tale) and Brendan Milburn (keyboard and vocals as Mr. Grumpy - the man not in a holiday spirit) and Rachel Sheinkin a graduate of Tisch's Graduate Musical Theatre Writing program is rife with countless examples of mirthless misery like this throughout.

  But wait, they are just setting the mood I tell myself as they break into their first number, The Last Day of The Year, and we easily discover the trio's musical talents are unquestionably above the average, even the electric keyboard thing, and we are calmed of all fear and doubt, for the time being.

  "Look how fast this year's gone by....I never read those top ten books, never took that trip to France, did nothing to improve my looks, I never learned to salsa dance, I didn't be all I could be, I didn't see all I could see."

  Miss Vigoda's performance serves up a heapin' helpin' of dimples and cheshire smiles, an unstoppable grown up Shirley Temple opposing Mr. Milburn's whining, self-loathing, modern day Scrooge.

  Vigoda beams and struts and deftly attacks her electric violin with an irrepressible child-like happiness and gusto, a Christmas fiddler easily romping through the imagined streets (the stage is bereft of props or any other illusory devices) of any Dickensian Christmas landscape with the pure, indefatigable hope of any worthy Tiny Tim.   We are swept away by her unyielding and wide brimming grin that hangs from earlobe to earlobe, from start to finish.

  The song wraps:

  "Storm clouds drift away, a star comes out to play, and it's coming down, it's coming down"

...and we are thus reassured the man awash in misanthropy and anti-social grumbling will eventually give sway to the rapture of good tidings and happiness and magic...in due time.  But when?  We're ready!  Let's party!

  But no, we have far too many festering miseries to recount yet before we can invite the holiday spirit in for relief, only we don't know it yet.

  Mr. Grumpy arrives in his humble abode only to dismiss various calls on his answering machine - does anyone even own an answering machine anymore?

  After rejecting two invitations and being forewarned NOT to come to a party  - which his ex-girlfriend is attending and who can blame her - he moans out his personal New Year's Eve Resolution in a song entitled: Resolution:

  "I am resolute.  I will tie no tie, I will suit no suit.  I won't be going out on the town, cause my angst is up and my battery's run down.  What's there to celebrate about? I'd rather stay home and grout."

  It doesn't bode well that this early in the show, for some as yet indefinable reason I am unable to pinpoint, I wish I were back home loading a grout gun and tending to some do it yourself home repairs of my own.

  Within moments, a knock announces the arrival of his salvation in the form of a full-spectrum light bulb saleslady who much too chirpily and all aw shucksy explains to Grumps the misfortune of those afflicted with S.A.D. (Seasonal Affective Disorder) due to a lack of sunlight hours in the dreary wintertime. But not to worry she can relieve this malady with her stock of full spectrum lighting and the sheer force of will her preternaturally bubbly self abuses.   But Mr. Grumpy ain't buying and neither are we...not quite yet.

  Grumpy returns to his living room and begins to channel surf before resolving to do away with his cable service in the coming year and to read instead.   He then breaks into the show's next uplifitng tune:  Red & Green, and I'm Feeling Blue:

  "What fresh hell is this?  It's the televised abyss.  Will this Christmas season never be through?" and... "Everything's green and red and I am feeling blue.  All the tree's are brown in this silver tinsel town." and... "Spin the channels once again.  I see no good will toward men.  Cause between commercials nothing's new.  There's such a dearth of peace on earth.  Reprise." Ouch.

  Uh Oh....now I'm getting more than a little worried as the lady behind me begins to noisily unwrap a sucking type of candy in spite of the overture's admonition to refrain from such poor audience behavior, and to make matters worse, this patron has decided to offer us free of charge a running commentary on the action in a series of unsolicited, sotto vocce banalities.

"She's going to make him happy."  "He's going to read next year."  and on and on.   I turn and fix her with a glacial stare that would freeze Medusas snakes in place, unfortunately however it's sheer force of expression has little effect upon her.

   I squirm deeper into my seat and brace myself.  If only I could emblazon a forced grin unto my own features for the next hour and fifteen minutes I could survive this forced hilarity further.   It is then I recall vividly the sign in the lobby of Arena Stage's temporary venue in Crystal City: THERE WILL BE NO INTERMISSION FOR THE DURATION OF THIS PRESENTATION.

  I collapse into the seat and resign myself.  We are a captive audience.  Nonetheless, a couple with less civil instincts brazenly make for the exit, indifferent to protocol and good manners.

  Twenty minutes into the show and Mr. Grumpy just won't quit.  His litany of complaints grow longer as our spirits grow dimmer.  Ho, ho ho?  The lady two aisles down and to my right has opted for some shut-eye as Mr. Grumpy raps on about his basic mistrust of people in reference to a panhandler who asks him for money to catch a train home:

  "They're just another liar out on New Year's Eve  You don't trust Santa Claus on Christmas and you're right to be suspicious.  Cause the city can be nasty and the people can be vicious.  I don't mean to be unkind. There's no money and no time."

   Not exactly the high poetry and deft musical scoring of a team such as Kander and Ebb.  The "poetry" reeks facile and simple.  One thing is child-like and another is childish.  My neck is now parallel to the  seat back as the lady behind me intones in that inimitable and singularly grating if hushed tone, "That man just ain't happy."  Yeah we got it lady, we got it.  He ain't happy.

  In one of their asides to the audience - for unbelievably they risk further fractures as they drop character to speak in their own voices - gifted drummer Gene Lewin let's us in on his own gripe. The fact that he had wanted all along to do, The Little Drummer Boy, in place of the Hans Christian Anderson tale about The Little Match Girl.  He was out-voted and the little match girl story ended up as the parallel storyline.  And hey, what about his having to play second fiddle (no pun intended) to the other leading roles?  He wants some time to shine on his own and so they begrudgingly indulge him a fair share of the spotlight for his big number:  Give The Drummer Some.

  This turns out to be the highest energy in the show up to that point and a welcome breath of fresh musical jamming.  Lewin is a gifted drummer and easily flows and demonstrates an equal capacity in differing modalities fused together imperceptibly between rock and jazz intuitions.

  I won't belabor the point further.  The great tragedy here is that these very gifted musical players have to perform these lyrics.   All the zydeco frenesi and the Irish beer hall stomping of the fiddling, somehow cannot salvage what is the weakest link of this concept and where the irrefutable blame lies for our resentful, newborn "Bah Hum Bug!" -  the structure of the story and the amateurish rhymes and lyrics. Also, the fact that they are self-directed.  Perhaps a good director could have unified the pell mell hodge podge into something digestible.

  Perhaps too, the venue might be a tiny bit at fault.

  This kind of performance piece best suits a children's theatre.  If they made it just slightly more infantile in text - it wouldn't be a stretch -  children would be enraptured by Ms. Vigoda's kinetic playfulness and Mr. Lewin would look just so fetching in a Santa's hat, while Mr. Milburn could dress as an elf maybe?

  Something, anything, to add some more theatricality to the piece.  As it is, it never quite congeals into one form or another.  Is it a band in a bar?  Is it a traveling musical theater group?  Is it a play?  Is it striving to be too many things to all people?

  There is lots to be said in favor of ignoring, "the boundaries laid down by words like rock, folk, jazz and pop."  But they are not just mere words.  They are definitions too. They are art forms not to be stretched to the point of breaking for the sheer whimsy of anarchy.

   Had they combined some of each of these elements, as wholes, in place of throwing them all together into a jambalaya of incongruent stylization within each single song, it might have strung together as beautifully as a bright shining set of Christmas lights, and left us all a little lighter in mood and spirit.

  I cannot say it was the worst evening of entertainment I have experienced, for there is, as I have said above, much too much to admire in these performers.  They have more than just potential.  They've got the goods.  And I did laugh and I did enjoy the musical prowess in many places.  It just never attained the heights it was grasping for and failed to capture that imagination they asked us all to bring into the formula for the evening.  Turns out that was a tall order.

  Ms. Vigoda, in spite of a mild cough she deftly obscured from time to time, possesses a vigorous and capable singing voice that easily captivate us tied to her winning personality and ebullience.   Her chemistry with Mr. Milburn, who also has a great personal style and a tone of voice that reminded me warmly of James Taylor in places, make wonderful whoopee together. Milburn adorably so in that next-door neighbor kind of way, or maybe like a good cousin come to share the Christmas goose or maybe to play later in the twilit Christmas dusk of our collectively remembered  back yards of childhood.  He is easily charming and in spite of his character's whiny drudgery and lackluster lines, he wins us over in a New York second.

  As for the drummer, Mr. Lewin, looks to be the life of any party and ready with quicksilver hands to make one's heart pound a little harder with his exuberance and moxie.   Got plans for Christmas Mr. Lewin?  I'd like to book you for a party.

  However, in this reviewer's opinion, all these interesting and capapble talents need to find better words and pradigms to replace the established norms they wish to reinvent and reinterpret, for all the competing styles they are attempting to redefine.

  Eventually,  the clock stroke twelve and Mr. Grumpy hooked up with Light Bulb Lady and Love and Hope and Happiness prevail, for them at least.

  But it's gonna take more than a full spectrum light bulb to ease the case of S.A.D. I was so unprepared for at the evening's end as Candy Lady behind me, audibly sucking the last sugar from her candy, spoke her last exclamation: "Isn't that nice.  They're in love."

   Mercifully, as if by accident, in the finale, we got a tiny taste of the spirit of Christmas we had come for in the first place, when our three valiant performers began to play the simple beats of the over-exposed, but eternally beloved strains of, The Little Drummer Boy.  They should have listened to the drummer's choice.

Photographs for this report were taken by Joan Marcus and used with the permission of Arena Stage