Nov. 20--Chicagoans being nice folks for the most part, it's not unusual to sit in a theater here and feel an audience will a show to succeed. Especially in the so-called season of goodwill. Especially when it's new and blessedly Scrooge-free material. Especially when you've shown up for a hot rock 'n' roll Christmas party show in the middle of some aftershock from a polar vortex, a once-alien term that's becoming as depressingly familiar around these parts as a disabled CTA bus messing up Lake Shore Drive.
Add in Dee Snider -- the former frontman of Twisted Sister, now the most family friendly metal head you could ever hope to meet -- and the good feelings flowing toward the stage in "Dee Snider's Rock Roll Christmas Show" were so palpable on Wednesday night, it felt like the audience would have been willing to stay behind and rewrite the script and then perform all of Twisted Sister's greatest hits on their heads, were beloved narrator Dee only to ask. Snider started out cheerfully breaking whatever character he might have been portraying, by calling Chicago "New York's prettier sister." Such love was amply returned, if thoroughly tested.
Warm feelings and good people count for plenty in my book, and, especially if you have a pre-show drink or three, they might be enough to carry you and yours through this narratively thin and (the Snider encore aside) tentatively performed attraction on a snowbank of goodwill. Like me, you might take pleasure you're not in the office or at "A Christmas Carol." (just kidding, Goodman). You might note that Snider is standing before you, live and in person, unlike at the musical "Rock of Ages," which clearly inspired this 90-minute show, when all that the original rockers were doing was collecting their royalty checks while others did all the vocal heavy lifting.
But for all the good intentions and bonhomie, this show misses some of the targets it really has to hit. At these prices, anyway.
First and foremost is actually delivering an exciting musical sound that will feel nostalgically familiar to those of us who lived through the glory years of heavy metal, a genre that might now be the object of much satirical derision but which housed many a gifted, soaring balladeer (Snider being one). The sound here is just off -- it's partly a matter of volume, or the lack thereof, partly the lack of an old-school acoustic drum kit, but mostly the lack of performers working with enough confidence, showmanship and fortitude to deliver, down front. Come on. You gotta wail when you're in a show by the dude from Twisted Sister. We're not that old. This show had been going 20 minutes and it felt like we'd still not yet had a real number.
Then there's the matter of the script. Nobody craves Dickensian character development, but we really have to get to know and care more about the characters a little more than ever happens here. Something has to drive the show forward. A bit of back story, perchance.
The premise is weird but, to my mind, perfectly workable. Snider narrates, a la "Rocky Horror." A loser, cute dweeb-filled, neo-metal band named Daisy Cuter (a running gag, funny the first but not the eighth time, has the band really being called Daisy Cutter, only its name was misspelled) is on the skids at Christmastide. Fine. Many a holiday show starts there. The band, which plays a basement venue to an audience of one drunk (played by William McGough), and who want only to move to the posh club upstairs (Keely Vasquez plays the owner of both) find themselves singing rock versions of carols instead of the numbers they intend to sing. Cute but tip-free waitresses are shocked.
The band thus sells their souls to the devil (I think). And they call in an exorcist -- Snider, who uses a nutcracker in an exorcism (stay with me here). After various other machinations, some of which involve the confusion of Satan and Santa (one letter, after all), these cute metal heads each get their cute gals and everyone decides, like Slade, Springsteen and Seger before them, that a rockin' Christmas ain't so bad when it sells.
Wild as that little yarn may seem, all of that could work -- could -- if everybody commits to the story. The problem is that the show doesn't take its fable of compromise in the music biz seriously enough. It does not, say, explore what it might actually feel and look like, in detail, to start singing "We're not gonna take it," only for "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" to come out instead. Much fun could be had. That's partly an issue with Snider's script, but also with Adam John Hunter's direction which is, you might say, a light and deferential pass. And lacking in specificity.
One of the ironclad rules of satirizing anything or anyone that performs is that the satire only works when the satirist is every bit as good as that which is being satirized. You gotta hear the full metal sound before you can enjoy its excesses being lampooned. That never happens. The intra-band conflict also is sketchy, to say the least. I never quite understood why some of the guys hated Christmas songs, and some seemingly weren't so bothered by them. It's not so much a matter of "don't stop believing." It's finding the place to start.
The actors aren't terrible -- it's just that the band members: Adam Michaels, Dan Peters, Tommy Hahn and Wilam Tarris, remain indistinct and bland, their strong musicianship notwithstanding. The show's women, the owner played by Vasquez and two waitress-dancers played by Christina Nieves and Taylor Yacktman, are all fine, but you don't get to know them. Robert Tatad choreographs, in "Rock of Ages" style.
If I were Snider and his producer, John Yonover, I'd start by retooling and authenticating the sound. Then I'd call a rehearsal and reiterate that everyone needs to fully believe in all that Prophet Snider has written as he pokes fun at Christmas albums while loving them to bits. And then I'd have Snider whisper in Dee's ear that he really should perform a couple more numbers -- he kills in the encore, and is the reason all walked through the door.
And then I'd work on the gags. Right now.
There actually are some yuks to be had -- a nice slam on David Lee Roth, some off-kilter giggles at the expense of metal excess, penned by He Who Knows. But some of the running gags stop running long before the gag stops being repeated. The whole thing needs more pace and pizazz, more tension. And present-tense truth. However weird the world -- and it's not like some of the bands being lampooned here did not inhabit an alternate reality -- you gotta buy the rules.
The best fun of the night, actually, comes from Suzette Guilot-Snider's outre, retro costumes, all bang on the money and the work of one who designed the flamboyant duds for many of the actual bands, back in the day. There's a key there to what works: authenticity. Dee Snider already has the charm.
cjones5@tribpub.com
Twitter@ChrisJonesTrib
2 STARS
When: Through Jan. 4
Where: Broadway Playhouse, 175 E. Chestnut St.
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Tickets: $30-$90 at 800-775-2000 or broadwayinchicago.com
