By MARISSA SCHOENFELD
marissa@du2.byu.edu
'The Farley Family Xmas,' playing in the BYU's Pardoe Drama Theatre Dec. 15 through Dec. 30, is a chance for audiences to celebrate the dysfunctional side of Christmas togetherness.
This one-man show, created and performed by James Arrington, has been running in some form for more than a decade and is the popular sequel to Arrington's other successful one-man show, 'The Farley Family Reunion.'
Audiences will be given a glimpse of the zany Farley family's Christmas party and pageant.
Arrington said the play is a satire of all the overblown emotional demands that come with the holiday season and a fun release for an otherwise stressful time of year.
'The reason for its popularity, I think, is that Christmas has become so earnest and so refulgent with warmth and kindness and joy and 'good will toward men' that the flip side -- all the silly, stupid, insane things -- get forgiven amid all this joy,' Arrington said. 'If you can concentrate for a few hours on this underside of Christmas, you don't offend the sacred but instead study and revel in the human.'
One fun part of this play is that it changes every time it's performed, so each audience gets a slightly different experience.
'The show always changes, because I've never written it down, so it becomes topical,' Arrington said. 'Whatever is in the headlines somehow winds up in the show.'
Another appealing aspect of the show is that it's sure to strike a chord of familiarity with audience members. With a clan of irrepressible Farleys bouncing around the stage, Arrington said people tend to recognize their own family members at some point during the production.
'No matter who you are, you're bound to see one of your relatives -- or even yourself -- on stage, and that's a startling moment, believe me,' he said.
There's a Martha Stewart-type relative who turns trash into tinseled treasures, some less-than-virtuoso singers and instrumentalists, poets of the fractured variety, under-trained dancers and other under-prepared performers, all held thinly together by the doggedly persistent and eternally optimistic Heber Farley, patriarch and master of ceremonies.
The play benefits from holiday music performed by Michael Ohman, Lisa Arrington and Sam Cardon.
'The Farley Family Xmas' is sponsored by the BYU Department of Theatre and Media Arts and is part of this year's Entr'Acte Series. It will run at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 15-19, 21-23 and 28-30 with performances Saturday Dec. 26 at 2 and 7 p.m. and Mondays Dec. 21 and 28 at 5 p.m.
Tickets are available at the Fine Arts Ticket Office, 378-4322.