BWW Reviews: Color A BLOODY MARY CHRISTMAS Blue

What do you do when your best friends are Jim, Johnnie, and Jack ~ Beam, Walker, and Daniels, that is? And it's getting to sound a lot like Christmas? And you've learned that you're deep in arrears on your HOA dues and subject to eviction on the holy of holy days?

If you're a trio of disgruntled ("...every day is filled with disappointment, regret and resentment"), over-the-hill denizens of a condo in senior city (Sun City, AZ), you crank up the gin-to-punch ratio and start scheming. One of you may even cozy up to the HOA rep who is the bearer of bad tidings.

A Bloody Mary Christmas, co-authored by Denny Guge, Jacque Arend, Shawna Franks and Stacey Reed, directed by BJ Garrett, and on stage at Space 55 (recipient of the 2014 Phoenix Mayor's Arts Award for Theatre Organization), is not your typical Holiday fare. It is most assuredly, however, a gobsmacking raucous run of laughs. As the company's ad warns, this is "the Holiday musical for people who hate the Holidays and musicals!" Well, that's enough of an inducement for Holiday and musical lovers to whet their curiosity and to see what gives. And, in fact, the full-house audience was surprisingly eclectic and multi-generational and totally into the X-rated humor.

Toni Jourdan (Blanche, several times married), Paula McKenny (Bertha, a geriatric nymphomaniac), and Lee Quarrie (Mabel, never having met a diet she liked), deliver all the punch that's needed in an endless string of unquotable but chuckle-worthy lines. These three comedic actresses are hilarious and enjoy a marvelous chemistry.

A special shout-out goes to Colleen Lacy, whose creative smarts show in the way she has dressed the characters up in gaudy cloth and colors that channel their personalities.

I left the show thinking of words like blue, off-color, ribald, risqué, raunchy, and scatological. But, most of all, after all, the key word was F-U-N!

The show continues through December 21st. Merry X-mas!

Photo credit to Glen Goldblatt

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