Chris, Mrs crams in as many hallmarks of Hallmark movies as possible – with a few nods to family and teen flicks of the late 1990s thrown in.Max Power Photography/Boldly Productions
- Title: Chris, Mrs
- Music, book and lyrics: Matthew Stodolak and Katie Kerr
- Director: Katie Kerr
- Actors: Liam Tobin, Danielle Wade
- Company: Boldly Productions
- Venue: The Winter Garden Theatre
- City: Toronto
- Year: Runs to Dec. 31
All I want for Chris, Mrs, the cozy new Christmas musical now on stage at the Winter Garden, is warm and well-filled houses over the holidays.
Independent commercial theatre producers putting up original shows on Toronto stages this time of year are too few and far between, despite ample audience existing for all manner of frivolous, fluffy fare imported from the United States and Britain. Yes, Canadians deserve to make a little money at home with their own Christmas kitsch, too.
Chris, Mrs, written, composed and handsomely produced by the husband-wife team of Matthew Stodolak and Katie Kerr, may not be the deepest work of musical theatre, but it does have a very smart and sellable idea at its heart: It taps into the seemingly endless appetite for Hallmark Christmas movies – of which 40 or so new ones land on the small screen each season.
There’s commercial genius, at least, in creating a musical that pays homage to these disposable made-for-TV romances – and then elevating it by hiring a host of Canadian musical theatre’s top talent from Broadway, Mirvish and the Stratford Festival.
Chris, Mrs certainly seems to want to cram in as many hallmarks of Hallmark movies as possible – with a few nods to family and teen flicks of the late 1990s thrown in. So please don’t take a drink with each cliché in the following summary, or if you do, don’t get behind the wheel afterward.
Widowed father Ben Chris (Liam Tobin) is a workaholic jingle writer, who long ago lost the Christmas spirit when he lost his wife; he’s now dating an influencer-model named Vicki (Olivia Sinclair-Brisbane), who is desperate for Ben put a ring on it – but only to keep a lucrative contact with a family brand.
Ben’s three kids, meanwhile, do not like Vicki on Insta or IRL. Troublemaking twin tweens Samantha and Samuel (cute and charming Addison Wagman and Lucien Duncan-Reid on opening night) play pranks on their potential stepmom (per The Parent Trap), while shy, bookworm teen Claire (played by the comedically gifted AJ Bridel) is intimated by her. (Claire sports oversized glasses of the type you just know will eventually be removed to reveal She’s All That.)
If it has a future, Chris, Mrs could stand to lose some of its overstuffed story.Max Power Photography/Boldly Productions
So, Claire helps the young ones write a letter to Santa asking him to find Ben a better wife.
Of course, this is where the action shifts from the city to the country – a winter-lodge resort in a small town owned by Ben and his down-to-earth brother, Charlie (a very likeable Kale Penny).
There we meet Holly (Danielle Wade), a seasonal worker who loves Christmas and children with all her overeager heart but who has been unable to commit to a man … yet.
The lodge, too, also has two teenage boys – one nice, named Tim (Henry Firmston), the other naughty, named Cole (Andrew Broderick) – for Claire to be torn between and a not-so-mysterious visitor fashionably dressed in red named Nick (Mark Weatherley).
If it has a future, Chris, Mrs could stand to lose some of its overstuffed story – cutting or clarifying the confusing plotline about Ben’s secret plan to sell the lodge to his boss, in particular – and focus on making the characters more real and the punchlines more surprising. Some of the production, too, could be made less rickety – like the poorly integrated choreography, and the, literally, rickety sitcom staircase in the Chris cabin.
In terms of score, however, Chris, Mrs is pretty strong – a collection of pleasing tunes sold by these top-notch singers, chief among them Tobin and Wade who also have enough chemistry to carry the rushed romance. The small live band sounds bigger than it is thanks to good orchestrations and perfect sound design.
The lyrics can be quite witty, too – a particular accomplishment given how difficult it is to find new Christmas rhymes after a couple millennia of carols. “Christmas is a commodity / But if that’s how it’s gotta be …” sing Ben’s advertising colleagues in the opening number. “Jingle bells / Pere Noels / Do what sells.”
I was particularly tickled when Vicki followed up a reference to Santa’s reindeer by suggesting Holly, “Stay in your lane, dear.”
Perhaps I’m telling on myself here by saying my favourite songs were sung by the cynics and the vamps. It’s, indeed, hard for me to get fully on board with a story that, earnestly, paints the “big city” as a place where people forget what really matters and “small town” as a place to recover virtue. That’s too coded for me – and I needed more pantomime-style winks to swallow it.
Then again, I live in a household where we’ve been known to binge Ingmar Bergman films over the holidays.
For this reason, I brought along a friend more conversant with the Hallmark genre and checked in with her at intermission and afterward to see how this was living up to her expectations. She just kept telling me “10 out of 10.”
J. Kelly Nestruck