Donny and Marie (Jeremy Deputat)
As the lights went down in the National Theatre last night, an enthusiastic member of the audience behind me called out, “Bring it!” Donny and Marie Osmond didn’t make any converts, but they brought it to their devoted fans in an interactive show that gave lucky audience members the opportunity to hug and even sing a duet with the seasoned entertainers.
“The show is about ideas … and I try to convey that philosophy to our writers.” In an Encyclopedia Britannica documentary about “Donny & Marie,” the Osmonds’ 1976 television variety show, an earnest producer defended his product as a bully pulpit for some kind of sequined discourse. What were those ideas? “Donny & Marie” had a disturbing tendency to sadism, from the recurring leitmotif of Marie tied up like a silent movie damsel in distress to guest star Paul Lynde refusing Donny a drink of water in the desert. Forty years later, the toothsome siblings are back with a touring holiday version of a variety show that is reportedly the number one act in Vegas.
The show is about ideas, but the Osmonds’ reputation for wholesome entertainment is occasionally countered by ideas that aren’t entirely in the holiday spirit. The night’s first big production number, “We Need a Little Christmas,” is on the surface a flashy look at Donny and Marie getting ready for the holidays: a tall tree on one side of the stage, a fireplace with stockings hung with care on the other, male and female dancer-elves supporting the star players in between with a flamboyant pizazz. The song comes from the Broadway classic Mame and was originally performed by Angela Lansbury (coming soon to the National in a touring production of Blithe Spirit). In the context of the show, Mame Dennis has just lost everything in the Great Depression and is thankful for a modest Christmas, or any Christmas at all. The dissonance between the song’s impoverished original context and the glittering excess of a stage show is heightened when Marie takes the opportunity to plug Nutrisystem. Is this tonal deafness or very subtle indictment of a culture of excess?
Donny and Marie’s stage relationship continues the sibling rivalry that has been part of their act for decades. But where she was the frequent victim on their ’70s television show, her stage writers have created for her a persona that radiates greed. In a joke that runs through most of the show, Marie tries to get her brother to tell her what he got her for Christmas. Donny at one point jokes that he has to keep his Dancing with the Stars trophy under guard in case Marie tries to steal it. There is a strange hostility in this family humor.
The production shows some of the seams between a Vegas spectacular and the relatively intimate National Theatre. A video screen at the back of the stage served as a screen for clip reels and close-ups of the performers, but the camera coverage seems better suited to an arena production. The National isn’t so big that audience members can’t get a good look at their stars. Illustrative montages were also projected on the screen, but these often distracted from what should have been sufficient spectacle on stage, and in at least one instance the screen images subverted the stage action, as when a crowd of faceless, silhouetted dancers played on the screen while Donny and company performed a medley based around Rare Earth’s “I Just Want To Celebrate” ( a medley that, I am happy to note, naturally included a snippet of Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration.”) The montage suggested that the dancers on stage were cyphers without personality. But Donny and his charges provided just the kind of variety show dance number that you want from this kind of act, and would have been better off without the video.
Note: Marie was not hoisted up by Santas in this production, but by plainclothesmen. (Jeremy Deputat)The screen did have its uses. When Donny performed his adolescent hit “Puppy Love,” he was backed by vintage footage of Donny Osmond fans screaming in a slow-motion hysteria that recalls German artist Christophe Girardet’s video installation, “Release,” which showed a slow-motion clip from King Kong of Fay Wray writhing in terror.
Donny’s production numbers were impressive, but Marie’s best moments (at risk of invoking her wrath, I’ll just mention in passing that somebody who is probably fired by now wasn’t always on top of her vocal backing track) came thanks to audience participation. She called two happy fans out of the audience; first, a sharply-dressed ad executive named Julien who had seen their show in Vegas four times and had travelled to Washington to catch their holiday special. He was sent back to his seat for a middle-aged dad named Steve, who shook his khakied booty for the audience, a feat captured in close-up by a cameraman whose angle of middle-aged boogie perhaps justified the big video screen after all.
At multiple points in the show, the pair each walked down an aisle and worked the crowd. Donny got an enthusiastic reaction from women eager to hug him, and he stopped for at least one fan-selfie. Late in the show, Donny handed out candy canes and passed on a handful to me, clearly aware of where critics were sitting at this opening night performance and perhaps hoping that sugar would ensure a better review. You were good, Donny. Note: A publicist assures us that “neither Donny nor Marie had any idea of where critics were sitting at the show Tuesday night.”
Through December 7 at the National Theater. Tickets start at $53 plus applicable service charges, and are available at the National Theatre box office, online at thenationaldc.com, or by calling (800) 514-3849. Group orders of 10 or more may be placed by calling (855) 486-2516. For more information, call (202) 628-6161.
