Surprise fuels comedy of ‘Christmas in Babylon’
Terry, the anxious dad at the heart of “Christmas in Babylon,” describes himself as a Babe Ruth of comedy. I swing at everything and I miss a lot, he says.
But like the Great Bambino, Tom Klubertanz is fascinating to watch as Terry, whether he’s flailing or homering.
Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s world premiere of Wisconsin playwright James DeVita’s comedy opened Saturday evening at the Broadway Theatre Center. Terry, a working-class Long Island fellow, lives modestly with his wife Denise (Mary MacDonald Kerr) and their recently returned adult daughter Abby (Sara Zientek). Their biggest concern is Abby’s raging anxiety — until old flame Kathleen (Laura Gray) re-enters Terry’s life, with her adult daughter Kelly (Eva Nimmer).
Thanks to her booming career as a self-help guru, Kathleen now lounges in $400-a-night hotel rooms. But let’s just say she’s not completely self-actualized yet. The revelation of something she’s been hiding from these
If You Go
Milwaukee Chamber Theatre performs “Christmas in Babylon” through Dec. 23 at the Broadway Theatre Center, 158 N. Broadway. Visit
milwaukeechambertheatre.com
(414) 291-7800.
or call folks sends tremors through Christmas season.
Underneath the sarcastic banter (and in MacDonald Kerr’s case, facial expressions so good that words aren’t needed), playwright DeVita, director C. Michael Wright and the cast are dealing with a painfully touchy subject in American life.
OK, two painfully touchy subjects: what’s OK to put on pizza and class anxiety.
The blue-collar Terry has trouble even talking with the poised Kelly, a pediatric orthopedic resident, even though she is eager to get to know him. Her mom Kathleen is in full flight from her roots.
Klubertanz reminds me of old-fashioned comic actors. It’s fun to watch his boiler sputtering as he noisily
their works his way up to an explosion. Terry’s feeble attempts to play the macho father do not hide the kind heart inside. His Terry is perfectly matched with MacDonald Kerr’s droll Denise. They may squabble, but they’re a longmarried couple who stamp Christmas cards together. Many a guy would turn in his power suit for that.
As Abby, Zientek is both funny and impressive in portraying a young woman with a counterphobic kind of anxiety. When her fear grows too strong, she lashes out verbally to create breathing space. Nimmer’s Kelly seems together and sure of herself, but the twenty-somethings have more in common than is first apparent.
The snippets we see of Kathleen’s self-help seminars, a mixture of affirmations and New Age/Eastern trappings, caricature her and that industry in general, an easy target. We don’t get to see how a speaker like Kathleen works an audience or why she would attract one (though we do see that Kelly has absorbed the best impulses of her mother). As “Babylon” rolls on, Gray does get to show us Kathleen falling apart, moving the comedy toward its final question.