San Jose Mercury News
December 7, 2004
A holiday groove
By Karen D’Souza
‘STRIKING 12′ BANISHES STANDARD FARE WITH HIP DIALOGUE, FREEWHEELING SCORE
GrooveLily, an indie pop rock trio, has ushered in a very cool yule.
And what’s so cool is that it’s so hot. “Striking 12,” the group’s electric version of “The Little Match Girl,” made an incendiary regional debut at TheatreWorks’ Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto over the weekend. Continuing through Jan. 2, it sets the holidays afire.
Part rock concert, part musical, “Striking 12” uses convention for kindling and leaves us all basking in the glow of the hippest holiday show in recent memory.
Banish all thought of Christmas treacle, of the false nostalgia and candy-coated morality that often pass for entertainment at this time of year. This New York-based band has taken possibly the most melancholy Christmas fable of all — Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of a society heartless enough to let small children perish on the street — and has deconstructed it with clever slacker-meets-Sondheim lyrics and a freewheeling score that lights from rock to jazz to folk.
Violinist Valerie Vigoda plays a perky Manhattanite peddling anti-seasonal affective disorder light bulbs door-to-door on New Year’s Eve. Keyboard player Brendan Milburn plays an office serf-turned-misanthrope who has had a bad year. His job sucks, his fiancee has skipped out on him and he’s not about to shell out any cash for some hokum halogens.
But soon he feels the prick of conscience. All alone, and utterly annoyed, he ends up reading the classic fairy tale and has an epiphany about existence — or, at least, he resolves to try to do something about all the misery in the world, instead of just whining about it on a Lazy-Boy-bound beer binge.
OK, so the plot’s not exactly a masterpiece of subtlety. But the dialogue tingles with cheeky commentary on the malaise of post-college life, that seemingly never-ending process of figuring out where you belong in a society that would rather consume than consider (especially during the season of shop-till-you-drop, when the cash-poor can’t help feeling left out from the clamoring chorus of ka-ching!).
The score’s the thing, however, and GrooveLily quickly made fans of the opening night crowd with deeply moving anthems (“Caution to the Wind”), pithy little tunes (“Screwed-up People make Great Art”) and insanely catchy songs (“It’s Not Alright”).
Vigoda has huge presence to match her heavenly violin and mesmerizing lead vocals. Milburn is the ultimate everyman, Jimmy Stewart in Old Navy duds, a softie playing at cynicism. Gene Lewin’s snarky asides — and tight drum lines — give the show its refreshingly irreverent air.
One quibble. “The Little Drummer Boy” number feels out of place. But the band’s post-show performance makes up for it as GrooveLily launches into a pastiche of its own songs, including the breakaway pop contender “No Room in Your Bag.”
Kudos go to TheatreWorks for helping to workshop this musical cure for the holiday blues. If you can possibly stuff any more activity into your seasonal stocking, “Striking 12” is too hot to miss.