THE CHRISTMAS BROTHERS: A COUPLE OF SNOW FLAKES
Bailiwick Repertory
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Brian McCann and Philip E. Johnson are such a team. Though their two-person variety show, The Christmas Brothers: A Couple of Snow Flakes, is no exercise in nostalgia–it depends upon such modern devices as video and synthesizers–McCann and Johnson’s collaboration has a touch of vaudevillian warmth. In the tradition of the Smothers Brothers, Rowan and Martin, and Martin and Lewis (in the early years, at least), these two really seem to enjoy each other’s company onstage. Even when they mock the idea of male bonding–as in the show’s only kinda funny opening sketch, in which they adopt each other as brothers–they commit so fully to the silly routine it’s obvious that they trust each other as only fully bonded performers can.
In their solo skits they’re funny, but together something greater than the two of them takes over. It energizes the show and makes even the lamest material–the caveman Christmas sketch, say, which entails the worst Monty Python accents I’ve heard since high school–entertaining.
Ben Hollis’s stage show is about as far as you can get from the video values of Wild Chicago without resorting to the archaic art of writing words on paper (or a glowing screen). Slow where TV is fast, democratic where TV is elitist, meditative where TV is mindlessly active, Be My Guest is very much an anti-TV talk show. Based on the admittedly romantic notion that we ordinary people have lives every bit as interesting as those of the rich and fatuous, it consists of nothing more than interviews with members of the audience and a “celebrity” (the guy who plays Benny the Bull, the night I was there). One by one the volunteer interviewees are invited onstage to take a seat next to Hollis. Then, for the next 15 minutes or so, he quizzes them about their lives: their likes, their dislikes, where they live, where they just had dinner, how they spent their day.
