Skip to main content
A big city lawyer returns to her wholesome hometown and helps out her dad, who’s worried he’ll have to sell the family’s quaint old inn.
Sound familiar?
As an affectionate parody of holiday Hallmark movies, Twilight Theater’s Christmas in Christmasville, which was written and directed by Chris Byrne, checks all the boxes. But the play doesn’t stop there. Instead, Byrne subverts the genre (and amps up the party vibe a giant notch) by also turning her show into a musical and beginning it with a woman dancing on stage and shaking her buffalo-plaid bum at the audience.
Byrne’s premise is simple: Sure, Hallmark movies are incredibly silly, but (come on, let’s admit it) they’re also weirdly enjoyable.
As anyone who’s ever watched a production from the Hallmark factory knows, poking fun at the formulaic plots, which seem to be specifically engineered to invite ridicule, is half the fun. Embracing that wisecracking mode, Byrne’s play includes a narrator (Lura Longmire, the woman in plaid jammies), who cozies up in an easy chair with a blankie, snacks, and wine, commenting on the action like a Greek chorus.
Inviting us to join in her cheerful mockery, the narrator looks at the audience and calls out ironic quips like, “Bet you didn’t see that one coming,” and also boos the requisite villain, Cole Stockington, the uptight fiancé of Holly Snow (Ashley Baker). Yes, in this show, the leading lady has the wrong guy in tow. Wrong, that is, because he’s only interested in money, unlike all those folksy Hallmark executives.
At the Dec. 10 matinee, Julia Oshiki, who plays the fiancé, was ill, and Byrne took over the part. Cole’s lines are a hoot (he constantly calls Holly “babe” in a dopey frat-boy voice), but the sight of Byrne, a middle-aged mother of grown children, with her long blond hair tucked up in a stocking cap, portraying a young, entitled executive, was delightful.
Hallmark-savvy audience members can also savor Byrne’s casting of Oshiki, who uses she/they pronouns, to play Cole in the first place, considering the saga of former Hallmark actress Candace Cameron Bure, who left the company when it started making movies with same-sex couples.
In another wink of humor, a bearded character who looks a lot like Santa is in the town square selling “nut sacks,” a joke that delightfully deviates from the typical Hallmark script, which is so clean the Virgin Mary could eat her Christmas cookies off of it. Perhaps the broad humor goes too far, though, when it features loud fart noises. On the other hand, the script might have benefitted from more laughs during a longish sentimental scene near the end between the dad and his love interest, Noelle Frost (Magdalen Powers, who has a lovely singing voice).
But it would be too Scroogey to dwell on such minor points when Christmasville serves up such generous portions of merriment, with catchy songs, clever sets (especially the painted gazebo in the town square), and a cast that’s fully committed to the craziness.
Hallmark movies, as predictable as they are, recognize our longing for family and community in an isolating society. Christmasville does that, too. When Holly and the hometown hunk hatch a plan to raise money for her father’s troubled inn, it’s comforting to imagine that friends and neighbors used to help each other out…even if that idea is pure fantasy.
What’s more, when the narrator claps along with a musical number or gleefully grins at the “meet ugly” trope, she invites the audience to do the same. Taking this to heart, the man sitting in front of me kept slapping his knees in time to the songs, and a couple down a row raised their lit phones in the air and waved them during a romantic duet.
As the performers dance and sing their final number, “There’s Something in the Air,” amidst a whirl of fake snow, the Christmasville audience is invited to unite in their enjoyment of a gooey cultural phenomenon. And by gosh, by golly, it unironically feels good.
SEE IT: Christmas in Christmasville plays at Twilight Theater, 7515 N. Brandon Ave., twilighttheatercompany.org, 8 pm Thursday-Saturday and 3 pm Saturday and Sunday, through Dec. 17. $18-$24.