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| "Winter" (Winter Maza) & "Stacia" (Winnie Wenglewick) |
Venue: Denver’s Dangerous Theatre, 2620 W. 2nd Ave #1, Denver, CO
Date of Performance: Friday, November 30, 2012
(opening night)
Running Time: 1 hours, 10 minutes (no intermission).
Local Christmas productions
tend to be either comical or traditional.
“The Perfect Gift” at Denver’s
Dangerous Theatre is neither; it breaks the mold by offering us something
totally different for this holiday season.
“The Perfect Gift” brings back our memories of the childhood holiday
traditions we knew; picking out a live Christmas tree, decorating it (lights
first) with perfectly placed tinsel.
Back in the day, we spent quality family time together, and argued about
whether the perfect tree had long needles or short ones.
We cherish these memories,
but these days Christmas is about material things: shopping, with those
supposedly “perfect” holiday gifts appearing on store shelves right after Labor
Day. Just as Stacia (Winnie
Wenglewick) struggles with the holidays, so do we. The meaning is lost in the rush to finish the shopping, the
wrapping, the Christmas cards. We
forget the real values of the season.
Stacia is not a happy
person; in fact, she’s pretty miserable.
Her friendship with Winter (Winter Maza), a homeless guy with an
invisible friend, seems to be the only relationship she cares about. Winter invites Stacia to his
traditional holiday festivities under a bridge with his equally homeless and
totally gay friend APJ (j. nick dickert).
It is when Stacia sets the table for three that things start to come
into focus for her.
Without giving away too much
of the story, I’ll just say that Stacia learns some things with her homeless
friends, and so do we. Life, love,
and loss are universal. And the
holiday season is a great time to stop and think about those we have loved, and
those we have lost. Could it be
that by thinking of them, remembering them, and talking to them from time to
time, they are not really lost at all?
Winter Maza and j. nick
dickert are convincingly homeless and convincingly wise. They bring a streetwise sassiness to
their roles, and smiles to the faces in the audience. They have very little (being homeless is even less glamorous
than it sounds), but they live a life they choose. Stacia, on the other hand, lives a life chosen for her by
others.
Winnie Wenglewick does it
all here; she’s the playwright, the director, and the female lead actor. She does all of it well, but she
absolutely shines on the stage as
Stacia. She delivers her final
speech alone on the stage with all the emotion she can muster. We can feel her love, and her
loss. She brings herself and the
audience to tears. It’s
powerful. It’s personal. And it’s memorable.
“The Perfect Gift” is “perfect” if you’re looking for something
different for the holidays. It’s
not a “wonderful life.” It’s a
real life, and it’s a real holiday.
It may not restore your faith in Christmas, but it will focus you on
what really matters at the holidays.
And for me, that’s a perfect
gift for any season.
NOTES:
This show runs until December
23. Performances on: Thursday (December 13 & 20), Friday
and Saturday evenings, and Sunday matinees (brunch included with tickets). Mature themes and salty language.
Director:
Winnie Wenglewick
Cast:
Winter Maza: Winter
Winnie Wenglewick: Stacia
j. nick dickert: APJ
Maeve Wenglewick: Katie
All photo credits: Denver's Dangerous Theatre.
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