Yippee-ki-yay, you’ll get a kick out of Die Harsh: The Christmas Musical, a review

The Christmas show is the natural home of the flashback, ’tis true. (I give you Scrooge’s night course in how to not be a relentless jerk).

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But it’s a special kind of Christmas show that opens with an amusingly truncated wartime tableau, gunshots, and a chorus of disaffected blonde Germanic henchmen who lament working a heist on Christmas Eve (no overtime). “I vish I could haff a normal Christmas.”

Normal? Ha!

Die Harsh: The Christmas Musical, back for a fourth Yuletide outing, is a loony, impressively ingenious double-parody of the quintessential blockbuster action thriller Die Hard and the quintessential Dickens ghost story A Christmas Carol. And it’s a marriage that’s damn funny, as I can testify from a return visit to the show — this year’s buffed-up edition directed by Sarah Dowling at the Orange Hub.   

The creation of resident Grindstone Theatre parodists Simon Abbott (music and lyrics) and Byron Martin (book and lyrics), who are the perpetrators of Hot Boy Summer and ThunderCats, Die Harsh comes with its own particular cross-branding of nostalgia.

It’s nerd fuel on all fronts. Take the score: Abbott and Martin are steeped in musical theatre; there are assorted references to Sweeney Todd, Annie, Les Mis, The Rocky Horror Show… The opening number is a spot-on amusingly choreographed James Bond pastiche with a German accent (“he just von’t … die harsh!”). And after that there are pure musical theatre numbers, power ballads, patter songs, rock, rap. Yup, the Ghost of Christmas Present (Alexis Hope) is a rapper. Hans Schmuber (David Findlay), the villainous, Scroogian leader of an international gang of German terrorists, sings his own take on Dr. Frank N Furter’s signature number: “ich bin ein sexy German terrorist.” The finale ensemble number is a lovely Christmas 11 o’clock number, “what is this feeling gaining way…? Christmas will never be the same”).

Evan Dowling in Die Harsh: The Christmas Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Cézanne Laurette

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Speaking of heists, the set-up (and configuration of Camille Paris’s bi-level set, lighted by Scott Peters) is lifted from the blockbuster movie by smart and smart-ass budget theatre — which is part of the fun. Hans Schmuber and his gang, looking for a big haul, take corporate hostages in Origami Corp’s  L.A. skyscraper at the company Christmas Eve bash. And as ghosts arrive to take charge of Hans’s moral redemption, they use the elevator (an upgraded model from last year’s) that dominates the set. Expect the first when the elevator bell dings once.

Mhairi Berg, Evan Dowling, David Findlay, Alexis Hope in Die Harsh: The Christmas Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Cézanne Laurette

The funniest prop is the tin foil vent in which NYPD cop John McWayne (Evan Dowling) hides out in Origami Tower when he arrives on the West Coast looking for his estranged wife Holly (Mhairi Berg). The second funniest is the cardboard limo in which the cool cat Ghost of Christmas Present (Alexis Hope) and Hans share a spliff with a very large teddy bear in the back seat.

To see a cast of six (extremely able-bodied) singer/dancers take on a zillion-dollar action thriller is to get a kick out of silly comic complication. The actors are in perpetual quick-change mode. Newcomers Alexis Hope and Beatrice Kwan hurl themselves nimbly into a ridiculous assortment of roles. Findlay is terrific as the suave, glinting villain, the “cunning Hun” with the showbiz gene and a line of Ebenezer dismissals: “I can’t afford to make idle henchmen happy.”

Mhairi Berg and Evan Dowling in Die Harsh: The Christmas Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Cézanne Laurette

And equally deadpan are Dowling, a hoot as the hard-ass Noo-Yawk cop/Elmer Fudd crossover, and Berg, a triple threat of remarkable comic versatility as a variety of plucky women including Holly, a news reporter, cops, orphans….  She shares a showstopper of an FBI tap number with Kwan (and you thought the FBI only tapped phones). Which makes Berg the only star of the season to wear both tap and ballet pointe shoes.

How this turns into Christmas Carol on Christmas morning is something you’ll have to see for yourself. Tiny Tim and Mr. Fezziwig have Die Harsh versions … but I’m not going to spoil their shameless entrances for you. Suffice to say that Martin and Abbott have great affection for music hall tradition, and its goofball arsenal of sight gags and mouldy jokes. Is Hans nothing but a common thief. “No, I’m an exceptional thief.”

Director Dowling has sharpened the edges of scenes that move both narratives forward, and also clarifying the spatial relationships between characters in inventively stylized theatrical ways.  Abbott himself leads the excellent band — Cooper Ray, Kessler Douglas, Curtis den Otter — from the keyboard on the roof of Origami Tower.

And they rock. Yippee-ki-yay, you’ll get a kick out of this exuberant Christmas special.

REVIEW

Die Harsh: The Christmas Musical

Theatre: Grindstone Theatre

Created by: Byron Martin and Simon Abbott

Directed by: Sarah Dowling (original director Byron Martin)

Starring: David Findlay, Evan Dowling, Mhairi Berg, Rain Matkin, Alexis Hope, Beatrice Kwan

Where: Orange Hub, 10045 156 St.

Running: through Dec. 28

Tickets: showpass.com