Holiday at the Elbow Room Café

At The Cultch until December 29, 2019
Tickets from $26 at tickets.thecultch.com or 604-251-1363

Posted December 13, 2019

Just when I think I have reached the height of my Bah! Humbug-edness, I find myself moved by a young man sweetly singing Silent Night. The young man is David Underhill, a recent Studio 58 grad, and the carol breaks through the craziness that is Holiday at the Elbow Room Café. Underhill introduces a moment of calm reflection before the chaos kicks in again. Every mother that ever was – including the Virgin Mary – experiences heavenly peace when the babe (holy or unholy) finally slips off into slumber land.

Zee Zee Theatre revisits the Elbow Room Café: The Musical (March 2017 at the York Theatre) with this festive romp. We’re back in the café – created by Marina Szijarto – with its painted cartoonish backdrop and dozens of celebrity photos pinned to the walls. It’s Christmas Eve, it’s snowing and the café’s proprietor Patrick/Patrice (Joey Lesperance) is trying to shut the place down for the night so he can attend his favourite “Holiday Spectacular” elsewhere.

The snow is piling up against the door when Tabby (Emma Slipp), the American tourist with big boobs and a mouth to match, barges into the café.  “A woman should not be expected to handle so many inches”, she says, referring, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, to the snow. With the snowflakes falling and an Amazon delivery boy delivering packages, what follows is an abundance of jokes about inches, packages and boxes. The opening night audience loved it.

Me, I could have done with less zaniness but Slipp is so much fun to watch; she makes every moment, every gesture, every naughty word count. Variously rigged out by Szijarto in leopard skin tights and cowboy boots or a green satin gown with a near-navel neckline, Slipp is the engine that keeps this Christmas train on track.

The story, however, is not Tabby’s. It’s the continuing, 40-year relationship between Patrice/Patrick and Bryan (David Adams), the business and life partners of the Elbow Room Café. The real Elbow Café (may it rest in peace), a long time fixture on Davie Street, was run by business and life partners Bryan Searle (1931-2017) and Patrick Savoie.  Apparently, customers got shit and abuse but terrific Eggs Benny and everyone loved it.

In the play, Patrice/Patrick and Bryan love each other but they constantly snipe away and it always looks as if the relationship will finally come apart at the seams.  But that would not make a very merry show, would it, so that’s not going to happen. There’s got to be a happy ending – and there is.

Happy ending or not, Holiday at the Elbow Room Café is not for kids although all the sly and not so sly innuendoes would likely go over their heads. “Homosexuals finally getting [snow]plowed”, “I’m always able to find the back door” and “I did cruise with an Alaskan once” require a certain, uh, awareness.

In short, the show is – as one character accuses – “brash and classless”.  The Twelve Days of Christmas finishes with “And a desperate need to go pee”, sung by Emilie Leclerc as Holly Day, the health inspector, and the others.  As Bryan puts it, Holiday at the Elbow Room Café is “five people singing old songs with cheeky new lyrics. Who’d buy a ticket for that?” Well, lots will. With Dave Deveau (writer) and Cameron Mackenzie (director) at the helm, Zee Zee Theatre has a large, enthusiastic following.  Those new lyrics, including some for Beethoven’s 5^th, are written by Anton Lipovetsky and accompanied by Christina Cuglietta on the piano.

The plot gets a little bit fuzzy in Act 2 – or maybe it was the wine at intermission – but it begins to morph into a sort of Dickens’ Christmas Carol with Patrice/Patrick, like Ebenezer Scrooge, being visited by ghostly characters: Christmas Past, Present and Future and an encouragement to become a better person.

But it’s hard to conceive of Emma Slipp as anything but flesh and blood – definitely not ghostly or ephemeral.  Bursting at the bodice, she  brings the house down with a ripe, raunchy rendering of “Let A Girl Eat”.

And eat we will. Whether we say Merry Christmas or Happy Holiday, it is a time for indulgence which is – in a good way – Zee Zee Theatre’s middle name.