Keep the Yuletide Gay

theatre Q explores what happens when a well intentioned gift goes horribly wrong and spins a gathering of friends into Christmas calamity. Part It’s a Wonderful Life, part Blithe Spirit, Keep the Yuletide Gay tells the story of five friends gathering for their annual Christmas dinner and gift exchange.

Holly, the host, welcomes her three best single girlfriends and her (presumably single) gay best friend, Warren: a group collectively known as the Single Belles. Holly is on the verge of no longer being a Single Belle as she is engaged to a man that none of the other Belles are particularly fond of. In a last ditch attempt to save Holly from what she thinks will be a bad marriage, one of the Belles, Fran, hires a mystic to tell Holly the she has turned Warren straight. What Fran doesn’t know is that the mystic really has the goods and casts a spell that indeed turns Warren hetero. Fran also doesn’t know about Warren’s surprise guest: his new boyfriend Chad.

Starting with a badly set dinner table and deteriorating into an incredibly awkward Christmas party complete with an alcoholic witch, some Lindsay Lohan perfume, warts, a bloody Santa, a Lionel Ritchie/Diana Ross duet, burnt dinner, some very unexpected skirt chasing, and, of course, the world’s worst Christmas gift, Keep the Yuletide Gay ultimately reminds us what it means to be a friend.