“I never thought I’d be associated with a new Christmas tradition,” Jenn Harris marvels.
Yet it’s true. She’s in “Christmas on the Rocks,” which saucily updates classic holiday tales from stage and screen and has returned for a third year of boozy confessions and holiday cheer at Hartford’s TheaterWorks.
The show, conceived and directed by Rob Ruggiero, the theater’s producing artistic director, is made up of one-acts written by seven well-known contemporary playwrights, most of whom have had other works done at TheaterWorks. “Christmas on the Rocks,” which runs through Dec. 23, has more than dozen characters but only three players: Man, Woman and Bartender.
Harris became the show’s Woman last year.
“Harry Bouvy suggested me when Christine [Pedi] was unable to return,” Harris says. “At first I thought, ‘I don’t want to do a Christmas show. What’s a Christmas show?,'” but she quickly reconsidered. “I didn’t have to audition; Rob and I just had a phone/Skype conversation for about an hour. Rob likes to talk to people, see how they’ll fit in.”
Harris felt no pressure to mimic the performance of her predecessor. “I hadn’t seen the show that first year. Rob was very good; he just let me do my show.”
When Bouvy, who played Man, was unable to do the show this year, Harris continued the tradition of performers recommending their friends by suggesting her frequent collaborator, Matt Wilkas, for the role. (Ronn Carroll has played the Bartender all three years). Harris and Wilkas met while students at Boston University in the mid-1990s as members of the improv group Spontaneous Combustion. More recently, they co-starred in the feature film “Gayby,” about a straight woman and her gay friend who decide to have a baby together. Harris and Wilkas are now putting the finishing touches on “New York Is Dead,” a new Web series that they wrote and produced and are hoping will be ready this spring or summer.
“I went into this totally blind,” says Wilkas, who was born in Bridgeport and lived in Fairfield until he was 10, but until now hasn’t performed in Connecticut. “It’s just a lot of fun to do with Jenn. … Jenn and I just have this chemistry. … We’ve just had it since the day we met. Of course, in this play, we don’t really share any scenes together.”
Each playlet profiles a famed Christmas-story character — favorites such as Ralphie in “A Christmas Story,” Charles Dickens’ Tiny Tim and Dr. Seuss’s Cindy Lou Who — venting about the twists and turns that have brought them to the bar.
Harris calls “Christmas on the Rocks” a great show for character actors. “It’s very satisfying to play,” she says.
“I remembered ‘Miracle on 34th Street,’ loved ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas,’ knew ‘The Nutcracker,’ knew the Little Red-Haired Girl from ‘Peanuts,’ so yeah, I was ready.”
Harris is impressed with the form some of these literary updates take. She describes Jonathan Tolin’s “Miracle on 34th Street” take-off “The Cane in the Corner,” for example, as “a smart play, complex, not a cartoon or a one-off joke. It took longer to find the rhythms of that one.”
Likewise, for the audience, she says, “some characters take longer to discover than others,” since the premise is that they’ve all aged a few decades from their innocent, holiday-loving youth. One who is recognizable immediately: a “drunk, coked-up” Cindy Lou Who of “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” whose first spoken lines are:
Give me a bourbon. Make it a double.
I hate Christmas Eve. The night’s nothin’ but trouble.
“All the characters are very different,” adds Wilkas. “Even the tones of the scenes are very different.” Some characters are particularly challenging. “Charlie Brown is very hard. By nature he’s so negative, so down in the dumps.”
All the playwrights who contributed to “Christmas on the Rocks” have Connecticut theater connections.
John Cariani, whose scene “All Grown Up” references “A Christmas Story,” saw his “Almost, Maine” have a successful run at TheaterWorks in 2013, followed by “Love/Sick” the following season.
Jacques LaMarre lives in Connecticut and works at the Mark Twain House and Museum. His adaptation of the book “I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti” premiered at TheaterWorks in 2012, and he’s also had shows produced by New Britain’s Hole in the Wall Theater. His playlet at TheaterWorks is titled “Merry Christmas, Blockhead,” aka Charlie Brown.
Matthew Lombardo wrote “High,” a hit at TheaterWorks in 2011, and his “Tea at Five” played Hartford Stage in 2002. His contribution: “Going Green,” a take-off on “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”
The prolific Jeffrey Hatcher reworked the biodrama “Ella” after it premiered at TheaterWorks in 2005, revised “The Killing of Sister George” for Long Wharf Theatre in 2012 and saw his “Mrs. Mannerly” staged at TheaterWorks in 2013. He created “Say It Glows,” inspired by Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, for the TheaterWorks show.
Theresa Rebeck (“God Bless Us Every One” a la “A Christmas Carol”), whose “The Understudy” was done by TheaterWorks, had her “Sunday on the Rocks,” “Abstract Expression” and “Bad Dates” all done at Long Wharf.
Jonathan Tolins contributed “The Cane in the Corner,” based on “A Miracle on 34th Street”; his off-Broadway hit “Buyer and Cellar” will play TheaterWorks in January.
Edwin Sanchez hasn’t had one of his plays at TheaterWorks yet, but he knows Connecticut from attending the Yale School of Drama in the early 1990s and having his plays “Clean” (1995) and “Diosa” (2003) at Hartford Stage. He was brought into the “Christmas on the Rocks” project by Lamarre.
“Jacques knows me, he suggested me,” Sanchez says. “I loved the whole concept of taking these characters and seeing what happened after the Christmas stories we know so well.”
Noting that “most of the stories were male-driven,” he chose Clara from Tchaikovsky’s classic holiday ballet for his contribution: “Still Nuts About Him.”
Harris says that “Christmas on the Rocks” holds up from year to year because of its familiar characters, its comfortable barroom atmosphere and its uncommonly articulate bar talk. No major changes are anticipated to the script or production this year. In fact, “Christmas on the Rocks” is set to the point that the script will likely soon be published and available to other theaters, with a New York premiere a distinct possibility.
“I think these conversations are way more sophisticated, and funny, than what you’d get in most bars,” Harris says. “It’s not a stupid play, definitely smart fun.”
For a three-person, one-set show, “Christmas on the Rocks” is plenty lively, she says. “I just did a big dance show in California, and I think this is even more exhausting. Such fast changes. It’s very energetic.”
“Hartford audiences are wild, and TheaterWorks is this cute little, gorgeous little theater,” Harris says. “I think [the audience comes] to a show like this expecting to laugh and enjoy it. I’ll take a rambunctious audience over one that’s reverenced any time.”
“Christmas on the Rocks” is at TheaterWorks, 233 Pearl St., Hartford, through Dec. 23. Performances are Tuesdays through Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 4 and 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 and 6:30 p.m. Information: 860-527-7838 and theaterworkshartford.org.
