By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Of all the improbabilities attached to the festive season — home invasion by a fat guy via chimney, that stratospheric high note in O Holy Night, etc. — here’s a real corker.

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Rapid Fire Theatre, Edmonton’s deluxe improv comedy company, has created an original full-length Christmas musical — a script, characters, catchy songs, all fully rehearsed — in which the cast has no idea who their star will be, night to night. Mainly because the guest improviser arrives onstage, in costume and completely unrehearsed, as a character of their choice.

How can this be?

The Blank Who Stole Christmas, with a different villain every performance to fill in that blank, is an invitation to chaos. It’s back for the third time this December, the first at RFT’s new home in the Exchange Theatre in Strathcona (through Dec. 23). And as I can attest, having caught Friday’s opening night performance, there’s a mesmerizing kind of magic in the way that the cast and the star rise to this impossible spontaneity.

The gist of The Blank Who Stole Christmas is, of course, is the famously infamous Grinch, that die-hard enemy of everything Christmas. And Alana Rice’s set, all storybook cut-outs and wonky angles, is perfectly Seussian. As you settle in (drink in hand), you realize that the cast of five, spirited musical theatre performers in their jammies, are speaking and singing in the jaunty rhymes that are a specialty of the good Dr. S himself.

In the script by Gordie Lucius and Joleen Ballendine we’re in Woo-Hoo-ville, where the countdown to Christmas Eve is underway, much to the excitement of the villagers, a population that includes a fetching dog and a narrator (Abby Vandenberghe), a couple of unruly puppet twins, the Terrors (Katie Turner and Katie Yoner as “the meanest kids in school”), and Mr. Creature the teacher (Michael Vetsch). The Mayor (Lee Boyes), who’s an A+-type personality, is almost literally beside himself; he has to be carried offstage. His sweet offspring Honey Woo-Hoo (Marg Lawler), “wise beyond their years,” remains curious and wishful about the official village outsider, who never shows up for the festivities. “I remember, they’re the worst part of December,” the Mayor sings, in a patter song about the Blank that’s one of the apt, amusingly rhymed numbers by Erik Mortimer and Chris Borger.   

Lindsey Walker in the sequins, The Blank Who Stole Christmas, Rapid Fire Theatre. From their website.

More I cannot tell you. Except that on Friday night, up in a mountain stronghold, lo and behold, Liza Minnelli appeared, all lipsticked and sequin-ed up, in that classic showbiz pose with that classic showbiz voice, and the clenched high-beam smile that never wavers. Singer-songwriter Lindsey Walker, very funny and quick on the uptake, nailed it. And somehow the cast, who adapted seamlessly, made it seem that her arrival on the scene, with a phone that connects direct to Broadway and a natural tendency to tap-dance, was dramatically inevitable. “I was sad and confused. Now I’m happy and confused,” she reveals later in Act II.

Of all the Blanks who might steal Christmas, you have to admit that Liza Minnelli is, well, a challenge to the narrative setup. But then, apparently, on preview night, the Blank was Tiny Tim, Christmas emblem par excellence. Whaaat? And past Blanks, as per the archive, have included everyone from Mr. Burns to Dolly Parton to Darth Vader. Saturday night’s Blank was The Hamburglar.

The Rapid Fire Theatre mantra

The improv is so expert and unhesitating that you might wonder if the whole show was rehearsed. So to squelch wayward thoughts like that, the performers, led by Lawler, solicited cues from the audience:  “Has anyone heard a rumour?” On Friday night, these rumours about the villain included tax evasion and the killing of a cat. And these themes found their way into the dialogue and the songs for the entire evening.

The rhymed songs — “I’m going to do it/ Just like a Druid/ I will find what Christmas means” — are a hoot. These include the ear-worm musical theatre number I Wanna Tree (my new theme song this weekend).

This is fun, and funny, and crazy. Just the ticket for anyone feeling seasonally jaded by the relentless mall onslaught of Mariah Carey and other retail features. And you’ve got to be curious about who’s going to show up next; it’s a big bad world out there. There are three different versions of the show — “nice” matinees for kids, “naughty” for prime time, and late-night “nasty.”

REVIEW

The Blank Who Stole Christmas

Theatre: Rapid Fire Theatre

Directed by: Matt Schuurman

Starring: Abby Vandenberghe, Marg Lawler, Lee Boyes, Katie Turner and Katie Yoner, Michael Vetsch

Where: Rapid Fire Exchange Theatre, 10437 83 Ave.

Running: through Dec. 23

Tickets: rapidfiretheatre.com