Colombo Critic.com

Christmas Inc., The Musical was the debut production for the Johnpillai and Friends Theater Group, or Freshly Brewed Theater as they would like to be known. It ranks, in its own quirky way, amongst the most convoluted, confusing and downright nonsensical piece of theater I’ve ever witnessed. And, just in case you thought I was being overly critical of a debut amateur production, I’d also like to point out that the cast was made up mostly of kids and all proceeds went to charity. That’s right… I’m picking on kids who gave their money to nuns and old people.

Now that I’ve got that sorted let’s take a look at the actual production starting with the story…

The Story

There wasn’t one. To be more precise, there was one but it was so disjointed and pointlessly complicated that it would have been better if it wasn’t there. There was tourists, camels, three wisemen/kings or two kings and a queen (who were also supposed to be actors), shopping, donkeys, King Herod, a large department store, sheep and a seller of fireworks. There may also have been a radio jockey in striped pants but I seem to have suppressed that memory.

I get the basic idea behind it all; something to do with the commercialization and trivialization of Christmas and how parallels can be drawn between the greed and self-interest of two thousand years ago and the modern world. It’s fairly basic stuff but the script was so unwieldy there was a sense that a lot of the actors just hadn’t connected with it. And if the actors weren’t comfortable with the script then the audience is not going to be either.

There is a brief synopsis available here.

The Music

I’ve said it before: If you want to call it a musical, then you gotta be able to sing. The quality of singing in this production ranged from brilliant to bleargh. The musical “arrangement” wasn’t terribly interesting and repetitive but for the most part could have been overlooked had the singing been consistently better.

The Dancing

Honestly can’t remember but I’m sure there was some since a choreographer was credited.

The Acting

Fairly good to excellent. The three wisemen/kings/whatever make a good entrance but get tiresome after a while.

In Conclusion

Well, I’ve spent this review talking about what was wrong with this production so I’m going to end on the good points. First, even though it was (in my opinion) a bit of a flop as a piece of theater and not really a “Musical” I’m pretty sure it was a success as a charity event. I was most impressed with the souvenir which was completely devoid of commercial advertising. A very surprising achievement that I would not have believed possible before. More information of the production’s charitable work can be found here. However, while I admire what this fledgling production company has achieved I’ve stated before that charitable actions will not have an impact on any review published on this site.

Overall, this production company shows promise. There’s enthusiasm and energy that you don’t always see on the local stage. I’m looking forward to more work by this production company, with better scripts and singing of course.