A rocking twist on a holiday tale
By Kay Coyte
Friday, November 27, 2009
It's not every day that a holiday show is built around the story of a little girl who freezes to death on New Year's Eve. And is scripted as a comedy.
But then "Striking 12," the musical created in 2002 by the pop-rock band GrooveLily and playwright Rachel Sheinkin and opening next week at Arena Stage in Crystal City, is not your grandma's Christmas pageant. It's a hip, quirky retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Match Girl" in a contemporary city setting. With a sparse set and minimal costuming, the story is acted/sung/performed by GrooveLily's Brendan Milburn (piano), Valerie Vigoda (electric violin) and Gene Lewin (drums).
The original fairy tale is woven through a night in the life of Grumpy Guy (Milburn), a stressed-out young professional freshly dumped by his girlfriend and avoiding the New Year's party scene. His foil is perky Light Bulb Girl (Vigoda), who sells lights to combat the winter doldrums.
Yes, you can expect a little dark humor, says Milburn, who wrote "Striking 12" with Vigoda, his wife. The "Match Girl" story "goes from bad to worse, and then gets worse," he says. "It appears to have no redeeming value whatsoever. Why would anyone want to read this to children?"
Unlike the tragic Andersen tale, however, "Striking 12" strikes a balance between grim realism and happily ever after.
Molly Smith, Arena's artistic director, says the musical is "a story about finding love in unusual places." The script impressed her, and she liked the "inventive concept of part rock concert, part musical." But the songs were what really stuck in her head. "I had the soundtrack CD in my car, and I found that I kept playing it over and over," Smith says. "That to me is a harbinger of a good musical."
"Striking 12" first was performed in Philadelphia in 2002, then moved to other theaters across the country, including an off-Broadway run. Along the way it picked up accolades.
The play also marked GrooveLily's shift from a rock band formed around Vigoda to an unclassifiable pop-rock-jazz-theater team that draws from each player's talents. Vigoda is classically trained, Milburn has a master's degree in musical theater writing and Lewin has a master's in music.
All the threads came together to produce "Striking 12." Vigoda had toured with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and that stint proved inspirational. "We saw it as this holiday show, with the thinnest thread of a story and a narrator, and we thought, 'We could do this,' " Vigoda recalls. "We just needed a great story, a secular, universal holiday story to tie it together."
About that time, music director Ted Sperling ("The Light in the Piazza," "South Pacific") caught a GrooveLily show and asked Milburn about his theater pieces. Milburn, meanwhile, had met Sheinkin, and he and Vigoda sought her ideas for the project. Within months, "Striking 12" was fleshed out.
"It completely changed our lives," Vigoda says. "Suddenly doors opened for us, and we as a band lost this air of desperation. We realized this is what we should be."
GrooveLily has embarked on a series of collaborations, from a production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" to "Sleeping Beauty Wakes," another updated fairy tale musical with Sheinkin (this one set in a sleep-disorder clinic). Their latest is a solo musical for Vigoda.
For the next few weeks, Arlington will be GrooveLily's pad, and a homecoming for Vigoda. She's a McLean native, where her father, jazz pianist Bob Vigoda, lives. There will be at least one detour early next month: Vigoda and Milburn will receive the Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award for young composers at Lincoln Center in New York. "We'll be taking the trip with my father," Vigoda says, "and that means so much to me."
