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Wednesday, 18 December 2024

Theatre review: A Very Naughty Christmas

Look, I don't book everything expecting it to be high art, and sometimes I'll book things with the express hope that it won't be, but you can go in with fairly low expectations and still come out disappointed. For this year's most overtly seasonal theatre visit I kept it local at Southwark Playhouse, who've imported Alex Woodward & Daniel Venz' A Very Naughty Christmas from Australia. Matthew Semple, Stephen Hirst, Emily Kristopher, Dom Woodhead, Tom Collins, Aurélie Roque and Alister Smith also have various writing, composing and creative credits on the show, and the nine of them have put their heads together to notice that a number of popular Christmas songs have some reference to Santa coming. The result is a cabaret show that mainly consists of pointing this fact out to us for a little under two hours.

There's a couple of decently-done burlesque routines like a fan dance, plus a few little sketches, running gags, and a version of the Nativity story that brings in the obligatory audience participation element, but the vast majority of the show consists of popular Christmas songs that start off as expected, then quickly descend into new, smuttier lyrics.


Venz also directs and choreographs a production whose cast, mostly consisting of Australian veterans of the show (it's been an annual fixture in multiple Australian cities for the last eight years,) is led by Hirst as a horny Santa Claus who wants to be seen as sexy rather than jolly, with Alexia Brinsley, Kirby Burgess, Shay Debney, Jack Lark and Rebecca Rolle, plus new British cast members Rachel MacDougall and Chris O’Mara as his elves.


I can't much fault the cast, who are talented, endlessly energetic and build up a good rapport with a drunken audience - there's a lot of good dance moves when Ceci Calf's set design lets you see them, and Burgess and O'Mara have particularly good singing voices. But as I say, I didn't come in with huge expectations, just that it be funny and sexy. A few moments are funny, if not entirely original - one song about how Santa loves poor children less is pretty good, although it drags the joke out too long. As for sexy, bizarrely it's two Grinches stripping that most hits the mark, while from the side seats the very cute Debnay provided aFULL FRONTAL MALE NUDITY ALERTtonight in a dance where the naked cast where trying to hide their parts behind gifts. (I don't know if I'd go so far as to call his flash accidental; I suspect it's the sort of thing that officially isn't supposed to happen, but nobody's particularly surprised if it does.)


But at the risk of sounding like a Grinch myself, 90% of the show is more about dropping easy smutty references into every other line, with little to no actual wit or originality on offer. A couple of moments suggest they're building up a running joke only for them to be promptly forgotten, a sketch about more inclusive Christmases is delivered by the all-white cast with no evidence of irony, and I'm not convinced acknowledging who wrote "Six White Boomers" makes it OK to perform it in the country where he committed most of his crimes. If I was underwhelmed, Ian was downright shocked that a show that belonged at a Christmas drinks party had ended up in a theatre, and said he assumed Southwark Playhouse must have had a slot they desperately needed to fill. Which, ironically, is a better double entendre than anything the show manages.

A Very Naughty Christmas by Alex Woodward, Daniel Venz, Matthew Semple, Stephen Hirst, Emily Kristopher, Dom Woodhead, Tom Collins, Aurélie Roque and Alister Smith is booking until the 11th of January at Southwark Playhouse Elephant.

Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Mark Senior.

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