Blithering heights

'Tis the season to be Gorey

by Bill Rodriguez

A BLITHERING CHRISTMAS. By Edward Gorey. Directed by Brien Lang. With Claire Lewis, Ethan Epstein, Wendy Overly, John Capalbo, Libby Ricrado, Tom DiMaggio. At NewGate Theastre through December 23.

The bizarre imagination and bountiful output of Edward Gorey are as unlikely as his suspiciously fitting name. Through Edwardian imagery and a mischievously gory imagination, he has delighted generations with his droll and twisted humor. And now NewGate Theatre has discovered an obscure play by Gorey that can entertain both his aficionados and the hitherto uncorrupted.

A Blithering Christmas is a deliciously silly fest of Goreyesque nonsense. Three children are left to their own devices in the nursery of a remote English estate, their parents off on separate adventures. Catapulting down upon Blithering Manor is the unwelcome bounty of a Fruitcake Fiend, and the situation is further complicated by the occasional, then increasingly frequent, discovery of an abandoned baby. (Each infant comes complete with a locket of the type that permits their eventual identification at the end of "three-volume novels.")

With titles like The Epileptic Bicycle, The Fatal Lozenge: An Alphabet, and The Deranged Cousins; or, Whatever, the Gorey oeuvre will not be discussed by Oprah's book club any time soon. Since 1953, more than 100 small volumes, usually in minimal editions, have burgeoned forth like bats from a belfry. As a matter of fact, bats are a common motif of Gorey's illustrations, for which text tends to provide brief and cursory excuses rather than explication. Frail, anorexic women lifting wrists to foreheads and fainting at any opportunity. Hollow-eyed babes and tykes in unfailing danger. Statuary, graveyard settings, sinister topiary. A cruelly dignified patriarch in a padded robe or canvas duster, and always, always a vague but foreboding sense of fatal menace.

A Blithering Christmas, directed by Brien Lang, couldn't be a more casual offering if it were being improvised by Gorey narrating it on the spot. That's close to the genesis as well as the impression, since the play (think "playful" rather than Twelfth Night) was staged only once before, on the Cape in the 1980s, directed by Gorey. Tom Grady, a playwright and NewGate associate, was in on that production, which led to this one with Gorey's blessing.

There is no plot to speak of, just a few recurring references that anchor the random activities. Like a rollicking conversation with a dotty but beloved relative, the entertaining process rather than getting anywhere is the point.

The three children are Februrius (Ethan Epstein), May (Claire Lewis) and their younger sister Augusta (Libby Ricardo), in knickers, tea-colored lace and middy blouse, respectively. Some of the proceedings are in verse ("The program will be of no help,/ for which a useful rhyme is `kelp'"). They bicker, of course, complain that their strewn playthings have been put into toy boxes without their permission. Christmas is approaching, so they await the inevitable deluge of pen-wipers with annoyance. More immediately pressing is the never-solved inundation of fruitcakes. This is a plight more Existential than harrowing, since it reminds them of all those well-intentioned ladies who annually produce the unwanted gifts, who will never relent because they are too generous to ever actually taste the vile lumps themselves.

The children are taken care of by a well-meaning automaton named Otto (John Capalbo) and a matronly crocodile called Odile (Wendy Overly). Overly's captivating charm and whimsical presence are the most delightful offerings of the evening, just the sort of drollery that Gorey wins us over with on the page. Odile has a funny tale to tell about her origins in the tropics, rescued from the subcellar of a luggage factory by the children's mother, the adventurous adventuress Lady Thumbleby.

Eventually, they are visited by a Texas millionaire in search of whimsical architectural ornaments to purchase from such rural estates. Silas Q. Oatmeal (Tom DiMaggio) drawls his way into their company and watches a puppet-show performance about over-abundant white sauce, "ill-mashed turnips," death and black Christmas tree ornaments.

In other words, this is all a free-form, amusing frolic that wanders about peculiarly until it stops and it's time for applause. Which you will undoubtedly deliver smiling and uncoerced. Edward Gorey may have penned A Blithering Christmas with one hand while stoking the coals and opening his mail with the other, but who are we to second-guess a creative process so prolific? The black-and-white set, with classic Gorey figures surrounding us in the black-box theater, encourages us to cuddle for mutual solace in a Snidely Whiplash world. It's enough to swell your heart this Christmas season and not pass by the next infant you notice squalling in a snow bank.