Damon Pitcher, Seth Gilfillan, Victoria Suen in Krampus: A New Musical, Straight Edge Theatre at Workshop West. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

If you’ve cracked your sweet tooth on the hard candied nut of family togetherness, or you’re blinded by the glare from your neighbour’s seasonal light display, there’s gruesome fun waiting for you at Workshop West.

Straight Edge Theatre’s “Christmas horror musical,” that premiered (on purpose) in the middle of the summer at the 2023 Fringe, is back, in the WWPT season. This time Krampus: A New Musical is fancied up, by golly, and expanded into two acts, on a mainstage in the middle of winter.

In Krampus, Straight Edge’s naughty resident musical comedy writers Seth Gilfillan and Stephen Allred, who seem to have an unerring eye for the macabre, don’t have to unwrap the heartwarming Christmas tradition package: sharing, hospitality, family bonding, etc. They see right through it. And they re-gift it, so to speak — but with a twist, and the insight that the heart of the season is the cutthroat spirit of competition.

The wonky angles of C.M. Zuby’s cut-out red-and-green storybook design, an enhancement from the Fringe setup, set the tone. In the opening number of Allred’s grand guignol production, the “perfectly perfect family” assembles in their seasonal finery, an exceptional collection of Christmas sweaters and other festive costume pieces by Trevor Schmidt). They’re an eye-full. And they’re lit melodramatically (the footlight effect) like human puppets by designer Ami Farrow.

Damon Pitcher, Jacob Holloway, Victoria Suen, Amanda Neufeld in Krampus: A New Musical, Straight Edge Theatre at Workshop West. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

They’re led by their fierce ‘choreographer’, puppet-master, and enforcer Rhonette, aka Mom (“after everything I’ve sacrificed for this family…”). She’s played in stratospherically heightened high style (and high heels) by Amanda Neufeld as the Genghis Khan of the holiday season. You could slice turkey with the edges of her helmet hairdo.

The family one-upmanship is a veritable campaign. There’s more liquor in their ‘nog, they sing. More data on their phones. The Jesus in their Nativity is hotter. Their board games have cash prizes. The lyrics, as with all the songs, are multi-syllabic and clever, and they rhyme unexpectedly, or in cheeky serial fashion: bad, sad, glad.…

Dad is a compliant nerd, captured to a wincing degree by Jacob Holloway, who looks like he’s made of Lego. His parental catechism: “listen to your mother, don’t talk back to your mother.” My favourite line, which made me laugh in the summer of 2023 and made me laugh again last week, is “if your mother says Grandma is a judgmental bitch, Grandma is a judgmental bitch.”

The kids have an amusing sibling jostle to them. Billy (Damon Pitcher) has a fledgling insurrectionist streak; his song Just Lie is an ode to getting out of misdemeanour raps. Tilly (Victoria Suen) is a wide-eyed dimbulb, always a beat or two behind, waiting for a chance to show off her number for the impending Winter Pageant competition. “It’s not my fault I’m so cute.”

She only got second place last year, as Rhonette keeps reminding her. Rehearsal is important if you want to trounce the competition. After all, you don’t want to end up in “bad roles or supporting roles.”

Victoria Suen, Damon Pitcher, Amanda Neufeld, Jacob Holloway and Nicole English in Krampus, Straight Edge Theatre at Workshop West. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

Tilly and Billy’s ex-nanny Nanny Verla (Nicole English), who looks like the hell version of Mary Poppins, arrives unexpectedly, with a spooky mittel-euro accent, and a “dire warning.” There are dark secrets to this perfectly perfect family. Lies! And something sinister is happening on Christmas Eve. That’s not the Amazon Prime guy knocking at the door. And what is that at the window? Will Rhonette have the ultimate Christmas crisis: stains on the carpet?

The expert live musical accompaniment, led and arranged by Michael Clark, is by the three-piece Edmonton Pops Orchestra. This is a show with a French horn joke and an actual French horn. There’s something like opera on acid about the way musical theatre escalates in Krampus. Act II opens with a  recitative of sorts, the kind that’s usually in a foreign language. And I hadn’t remembered the weird, jagged operatic musical escalation late in Act II, Götterdämmerung with ‘nog.

True, there’s a downside to the expansion in length for this new Krampus incarnation. The fun of the inflated acting style in Allred’s production, from its first moments, has a time limit, in truth. And the brevity/impact equation is pushing its luck with macabre clowning in two acts. But it ends just in the nick of time to remain funny. Is this another Christmas redemption story? Ha! Krampus is your personal seasonal antidote to enforced jollity.

REVIEW

Krampus: a new musical

Theatre: Straight Edge Theatre at Workshop West Playwrights Theatre

Created by: Seth Gilfillan and Stephen Allred (book and music), Michael Clark (orchestrations)

Directed by: Stephen Allred

Starring: Damon Pitcher, Victoria Suen, Amanda Neufeld, Jacob Holloway, Nicole English, Seth Gilfillan

Music by: Edmonton Pops Orchestra

Where: Gateway Theatre, 8529 Gateway Blvd.

Running: through Dec. 22

Tickets: workshopwest.org (all tickets pay-what-you-will).