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Dreaming of a (Mr) Right Christmas
Confident, relaxed and in control: Sarah Gain as Mary, New York actress and mistress of her own destiny . . . . The Twelve Dates of Christmas The Old
Joint Stock
WHAT happens after you catch your fiancé on looking awfully cosy at the
Macy's Thanksgiving parade with a blonde called Melissa? On national TV?
Almost immediately your cellphone contacts are calling and texting that
they caught the moment, too. What's a girl to
do? Meet Mary
who dumps aforesaid faithless boyfriend and his diamond ring, but
suspects that she'll have to date 125 jackasses to meet one decent man! This show is currently making
it's UK debut in Birmingham and follows Mary's progress from ‘the
annoying girl with the jingly earrings' through a year in which
celebrations and holidays somehow lose their appeal. Mary, an actress from New York
City, seems to have no trouble finding dates; the men, however, vary
from perfect superhero, Dr. Hogan, through a stalker and beyond. Thus
the show compares and contrasts the sparkly, enforced jollity of
Christmas with the harsher reality of everyday aloneness. It takes a strong actress to
deliver a monologue, and this one-woman role is delivered with panache
and enthusiasm by the adept and versatile Sarah Gain who portrays Mary's
journey and mood swings (everything from vulnerable to stroppy) with
great energy. Gain readily assumes the
voices and mannerisms of the range of people in Mary's life and
characterising, in turn (and sometimes simultaneously), her aunt, her
mother, her sister, her one-time rival turned best pal, a succession of
boyfriends, and a five-year-old.
Ginna Hobden is a
Shakespearean actress from New York who penned The Twelve Dates of
Christmas because she was unaware of any one-woman plays that focus
on the Christmas period. The show is witty, funny and
light-hearted and avoids becoming depressing in the face of Mary's
broken-heartedness. There are lots of good punch lines to make you
laugh – surely everyone's had bad dates?
The cosy, intimate atmosphere
of the Old Joint Stock theatre is enhanced by the simple staging. A
couch and a Christmas tree take the audience into Mary's living room and
we see her hanging ornaments on the tree to signify the ‘small,
inexpensive, shattered scraps of life' after each date.
Her habit of asking the
audience for advice after the events – from absurd to downright comical
- is endearing and tends to include the audience in Mary's journey from
crushing breakup-to hope. Music throughout the show seems to serve
as a bit of an aide-memoire and will have you rockin' around the
Christmas tree.
A very original and
entertaining evening that deserved a larger audience, this show is
something of a cross between stand-up and theatre and is a delightful
pre-Christmas starter! To 15-12-12. Laura
Ginesi
*** THIS one-woman play by Ginna Hoben breaks
new ground at the OJS as it runs for 12 performances - the longest in
the theatre's history. It should prove successful, with shapely actress
Sarah Gain in sparkling form telling the story of lost love and what
happened to a young woman in the search for a new relationship. It is set in New York where Mary, an actor in her
30s, spots her fiance 'making out' with a female co-worker as she
watches a televised Thanksgiving parade. Her engagement ring is dropped into a Salvation
Army charity box and she spends the next 12 months looking -
unsuccessfully - for a Mr Right. Sarah Gain smoothly runs through the woman's
experiences of being set up, hooked up and fed up after dates with a
range of possibles, from a 'super hero' doctor she met on the subway to
a couple of guests at a friend's wedding. Pacing up and down the stage and occasionally
sprawled on a settee, she has no problem extracting the humour from the
situations, and as each liaison comes to and end she marks it by hooking
(or hanging) a cardboard male figure onto a Christmas tree. Even the helpful, or otherwise, advice from mum
and would-be matchmaker Aunt Cathy manage to raise a laugh in the
85-minute play which runs to December 15. Paul Marston
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It
is a sharply written, semi-autobiographical piece based on a decade of
singledom.