Review: A VERY NAUGHTY CHRISTMAS at Alex Theatre, St Kilda

Melbourne, the silly season is nearly upon us! What better way to celebrate the festivities than by heading down to the Alex Theatre in St. Kilda to see A Very Naughty Christmas. Produced by Woodward Productions and returning to Melbourne after being seen by 25,000 audience members in Brisbane, A Very Naughty Christmas is a saucy, adults-only, provocative variety show that will leave you laughing in your seat. You may even find yourself being summoned onto the stage by Bad Santa to help ‘make the yuletide gay’! A Very Naughty Christmas will give you bang for your buck, particularly if you are on Santa’s naughty list! 4 STARS.

Originally premiering in Brisbane in 2017, such has been the success of A Very Naughty Christmas that eight years later, the Show this year has productions in Brisbane, Gold Coast, Melbourne, and London! While it must be admitted that the tone, language, and humour used in A Very Naughty Christmas is not to everyone's taste, particularly those who identify as conservative, for the rest of us, the Show overall does a good job of blending wit and intelligence with crude humour. 

The creator, global director, and choreographer of A Very Naughty Christmas, Dan Venz, does a good job of linking all the Shows spicy and perky numbers together, while still ensuring each number individually remains entertaining. While some of the direction and/or delivery of humour at the beginning of the first act did appear a little ‘forced’, overall, A Very Naughty Christmas works well as an 18+ cabaret/variety show. In particular, the witty quartet in the second act that lets the audience know Santa is biased towards the rich, hits the right mark between comedy and sincerity.

The Melbourne cast of A Very Naughty Christmas does a great job of keeping the audience feeling jolly throughout. Whether it be the excellent vocals by Jordan Twigg (Billy Elliott, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical) and Jarrod Moore (Moulin Rouge! and The White Mermaid or The Little Lotus: A Musical Fable), energetic acting by Kate Yaxley (Groundhog Day), Justin Wise (MARVELous – A Risqué Parody), and Grace Laing (50 Shades! The Musical Parody), or strong dancing by Asmara Soekotjo (Miss Saigon, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat) and Callum Marshall (Elvis: A Musical Revolution), this ensemble cast is strong and works well together. Leading the way is Tim Paige (Pop-Up Globe’s Macbeth and Comedy of Errors) as Bad Santa, who navigates well the tricky terrain of entertaining, enticing, and engaging the audience through both onstage and in-seat participation!

A Very Naughty Christmas is playing at the Alex Theatre in St Kilda through to the 21st of December. Admission is strictly 18+ and requires valid ID.

Content Warning: Potential audience members should be advised that A Very Naughty Christmas includes highly sexualised comedy and audience participation.

To post a comment, you must register and login.