A couple dozen of your all-time holiday favorites get performed to perfection in OY! To The World ~ Christmas With A Twist!, back for its second December at the El Portal Theatre and once again celebrating a great big bunch of Christmas classics with one very special thing in common. Jewish songwriters wrote them all.

  Buddy Hackett lookalike Jay Brian Winnick returns as Shelly, who has come back to the winter resort once run by his grandparents (and conveniently haunted by the ghost of pianist Chris, played by music director Gerald Sternbach) in hopes of rekindling past magic with the help of fellow performers Joy (Sarah Uriarte Berry), Arnold (Cameron J. Armstrong), and Becky (Maya Sofia Enciso).

Now all the foursome have to do is decide on which Christmas standards to include in the mix.

Fortunately for all concerned, song writers like Irving Berlin, Mel Tormé, Sammy Cahn & Jule Styne, Ray Evans & Jay Livingston, and Johnny Marks left behind more than a few perennial favorites, and since Shelly is an expert in holiday song trivia, his costars (and we in the audience) get treated to a veritable crash course in Christmas music lore.

Did you know, for example, that Bob May was inspired to write “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer” after being made fun of because of his larger-than-usual nose?

Or that the very non-secular “Oh Holy Night” was an immediate mid-1800s Paris sensation until the Catholic church found it was written by an atheist and a Jew?

Or that that Isidore Itzkowitz, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, was the first singer to make “Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town” a hit? (He was, though under the more famous moniker Eddie Cantor.)

OY! To The World ~ Christmas With A Twist! is far more than a song history lesson, however, its performers scoring plenty of laughs between songs, and never more so than when donning a straw hat left behind by the resort’s resident comedian to deliver the kind of one-liners that made Henny Youngman a legend. (“Chris went into the tailor shop to buy this tuxedo, and he said to the tailor, ‘I don’t need any assistance,” so the tailor said, ‘Suit yourself!’”)

Still, what makes Gregory Thirloway and Maurice Godin’s musical/musical revue a spirits-lifting crowd-pleaser for the second year in row are its over two-dozen songs and the performances delivered by its four talented stars, three of them joining Winnick for the first time.

Winnick’s “Sleigh Ride” and “Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town” allow our knowledgeable host to lift our spirits awhile sprinkling in plenty of Borscht Belt jokes along the way.

Broadway star Berry’s crystal-clear soprano soars in “I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day,” “I’ll Be Home For Christmas,” “The Christmas Waltz,” and “Silver Bells,” and the SoCal favorite drapes herself in mink to make a sexy, baby-doll-voiced Christmas wish to her “Santa Baby.”

Armstrong, fresh from his starring role in the powerful new musical The Civility Of Albert Cashier, reveals silky pipes to do Nat King Cole proud in “Walkin’ In A Winter Wonderland,” the Christmas memories-evoking “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” and a deeply moving “Oh Holy Night.”

Stunning newcomer Enciso lends her rich alto to the heartstrings-tugging “Do You Hear What I Hear?” and her pop rock pipes to “(Christmas) Baby, Please Come Home” in addition to filling us in on the Christmas traditions “Becky” grew up with as the child of a Brazilian father and a Spanish Catalan mother. (One of them involves a hollow log that gets “fed” and later beaten with sticks until it “poops” out presents for children.)

And I still haven’t mentioned such favorite Christmas songs by Jewish songwriters as “A Holly Jolly Christmas,” “Let It Snow,” “It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year,” and “The Christmas Song,” or the rock-and-roll beats of “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree,” and “Run, Rudolph, Run.”

Sternbach’s musical arrangements and piano artistry shine brightly for the second year in a row as does his delightful rendition of “(I’m Spending) Hanukkah in Santa Monica,” Jeffrey Polk’s lively choreography gets featured in in several snappy four-person production numbers, and Ray A. Rochelle’s costumes, Shon LeBlanc’s set dressing, and Don Tuttle’s lighting design deserve production design mention as well.

OY! To The World ~ Christmas With A Twist! is produced by Heather Lee. Art Brickman is stage manager.

Check out your local theater listings this time of year and you’re sure to find more than a few A Christmas Carols, Nutcrackers, White Christmases, and Grinches stealing Christmas, their omnipresence making OY! To The World ~ Christmas With A Twist! something refreshingly out of the ordinary.

Jam-packed with hit after hit after holiday hit, and as informative as it is entertaining, OY! To The World ~ Christmas With A Twist! once again guarantees audiences the holliest and jolliest of good times.

The El Portal Theatre, 5269 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. Through December 22. See website for detailed performance schedule.
www.elportaltheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
December 14, 2024
Top photo: Ray A. Rochelle

Tags: El Portal Theatre, Gregory Thirloway, Los Angeles Theater Review, Maurice Godin