The Twelve Dates of Christmas

Online from December 8, 2020-January 3, 2021
Tickets at $19 at 604-687-1644 or artsclub.com

Posted December 6, 2020

Oh, holy night: it’s the season for a bunch of new, schlocky romantic TV comedies piggy-backing the Christmas season. Somehow, most of them end up with two tremendously attractive adults finding true love under the mistletoe. At least Dickens’ Christmas Carol and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas don’t follow that story line;  they’re both uplifting but romance doesn’t come into it.

Written by American playwright Ginna Hoben, The Twelve Dates of Christmas falls into the category of rom-com and it mashes up American Thanksgiving – the fourth Thursday in November each year – with Christmas, barely one month later. This Arts Club production, which opened on the Newmont stage of the BMO Centre back in November, is now being streamed right into your living room in response to Dr. Henry’s regulations regarding gatherings.

It’s another hybrid: a video of a live stage production.  All the theatre companies, including the Arts Club, are getting the knack of it: wide angled shots giving context and showing off the set and light designers creativity (Ted Roberts and Sophie Tang, respectively), alternating with close-ups of the actors. As compromises go, it’s not bad; it’s the best we can do under the Covid-19 circumstances.

The good news is that this one-hander, directed by Barbara Tomasic, brings charismatic actor Genevieve Fleming to all your electric gadgets. (Fleming alternates with Melissa Oei in the role of Mary – and others – in the show.) No rain to contend with, no parking problems. No lineups for the restrooms at intermission and we can simply hit pause when our eggnog needs refreshing.

Fleming finds just the right balance between real and artful. Obviously, she must be actorly when playing Mary’s mother, Aunt Cathy, Mary’s various dates and many more – all of which Fleming/Mary does skillfully and entertainingly. But, as Mary – recently dumped by her fiancé the day before Thanksgiving – Fleming feels authentically a 30-something woman suddenly in the dating game again. We get it, we like her and we hope for a happily-ever-after ending. We don’t exactly get a happy ending but we get something better: a hint of things to come, perhaps of Christmas Future.

As Mary’s kick-boxing instructor tells her, “You have to kiss a dozen frogs before you meet a single prince”. Hence, the ‘Twelve’ in the show’s title. Mary takes us through every one of them beginning with #1, the one her matchmaking Aunt Cathy sets up at Thanksgiving dinner, through #12, which includes a 5-year-old.

While most of the characters Fleming plays come across fairly well, her portrayal of the ex-boyfriend leads you to wonder what Mary saw in him in the first place. He’s clearly a dork and not in Mary’s league at all. We need to think he’s a nasty piece of work but we don’t want to think he’s sub-intelligent. We think too much of her for that. Fleming could pull back on the dopiness of him. (Interesting piece of trivia: the playwright married the man she earlier had broken up with. So I guess he wasn’t such a bad-ass, after all.)

The Newmont theatre set is Christmassy: a tree that gradually gets decorated with various items that fall – magically – from the flies. Mary seems surprised and delighted as these items drop down and we simply have to accept the impossible. Hey, it’s Christmas and it’s already loaded with improbabilities – a fat man coming down the chimney, to begin with.

Nothing offensive, nothing challenging, The Twelve Dates of Christmas is entertainingly seasonal  and will surely jingle the bells of all the singles who are kissing frogs out there in the real world in hopes of finding that elusive prince or princess. Or virtually kissing – masked and two meters apart, of course.