Not All Elves

Have Pointy Ears

NEW MILFORD — On December 3, TheatreWorks New Milford will open Scottish playwright Anthony Neilson’s black holiday comedy, The Night Before Christmas, for a four-week run. The theater will also be offering a special New Year’s Eve gala performance of this show.

It is late on Christmas Eve. Gary has dragged his friend Simon out of bed to see a little something he has found in his warehouse. Simon can’t believe it – and Gary’s friend, the local hooker Cherry, can’t quite believe it either. It is an elf! But is it a real elf, or is it a burglar?

Leaping from one hilarious conclusion to another, they try to work out what to do next, not noticing that the elf is looking increasingly ill. The true meaning of Christmas and the holiday feeling are explored when this unlikely quartet is brought together in a warehouse on one snowy Christmas Eve.

“The Night Before Christmas is for those of us who’ve grown weary of the schmaltzy sentimentality that so often seeps into theaters at Christmastime,” says director Bruce Thomson. “This is a Christmas show for those who are in the mood to see a few of those quaint Babes-in-Toyland Christmas notions roasting on an open fire alongside the chestnuts.”

Written and first produced at the London Fringe in 1995, The Night Before Christmas has been called “a hoot from start to finish with lots of brusque, wry, funny dialogue” by Time Out London, and The Guardian has written: “The comedy adroitly mixes the irreverent with the magical.”

“On the surface, the show is a caustic, joke-packed little play that satirizes the commercialization of the Christmas season,” said producer Richard Pettibone. “Yet the elf awakens something in the characters and slowly they reveal a little warm-hearted yearning for some of the magic that Christmas held for them before the big nasty grown-up world stole it away.”

The cast features Thomas Libonate as the elf, with Keir Hansen of Newtown, Mark Norman and Amy Clyde (Weston) as the cynical adults who capture him.

“Magic, real or imagined, often occurs in the least likely of places to the least likely of people,” said artistic director Bill Hughes. “But perhaps, as in the case of these characters, that is where a bit of the Christmas spirit is needed most.”

Performances will be weekends through December 19. Curtain is Friday and Saturday evenings at 8, and Sundays, December 12 and 19, at 2 pm. The December 4 show is sold out.

Tickets for all shows are $15. Seating is general admission.

The show is not appropriate for children... or elves.

Thursday, December 9, at 8 pm, will be this production’s Pay What You Want night. At this performance patrons name the price for their tickets.

Also, a gala performance is being planned for Friday, December 31. Curtain will be at 8 and tickets, which are $30 for this show, include hors d’oeuvres and an open bar of wine, beer and soft drinks.

Reservations can be made online at www.TheatreWorks.us or by calling the box office at 860-350-6863.

TheatreWorks is an award-winning, regional theatre company located at 5 Brookside Avenue, just off Route 202 (next to M&B’s IGA) in New Milford.