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Uncle Dickie's Wicked Little Christmas

by Three Wise Monkeys
SF Bay Guardian Review December 10, 2003 (Robert Avila)

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Whether it was Sartre or Santa who said "the holidays are other people," it's easy to believe it watching Richard J. Bernier and Three Wise Monkeys' evening of subversive seasonal one-acts, eyeing the hell and/or heaven that Christmas can bring. It's a mixed bag, however. John Dixon directs two one-note skits: Ken Slattery's Christmas Gift – about two couples (P.A. Cooley and Sarah Mitchell; David Breaux and Karina Racz) destroying a bachelor friend (W. Jay Moore) whose singularity has become an insufferable holiday downer – is well acted, but the humor gets stretched thin over a dearth of ideas. Margery Kreitman's lightly amusing Holding, meanwhile, featuring Cooley spending Christmas around the automated phone tree of a suicide hot line, feels rehashed. Anthony Neilson's subtler Night before Christmas, set during a break-in at a toy warehouse, easily walks off with the evening. Directed by Ryan Montgomery, it has three gritty working-class Brits (the funny and engaging Alexia Burland, Brian L. Perkins, and Jon Wolanske) flummoxed and divided by a smiley intruder in green felt (Elan Freydenson) offering them three wishes in exchange for being allowed to scamper back to the North Pole.
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