This performance was a staged reading of Kari Williamson and Stefanie Austin’s play Cutthroat Christmas, as a kind of prelude to the upcoming sequel Cutthroat Christmas: Deadly Deals. This original script had received a full production two years ago, and this read through was basically done so that anyone (like me) who didn’t see the original would have some context before the sequel premiers—though the sequel works as a standalone play, so the original isn’t required to follow the action.

Cutthroat Christmas is set during the holiday party for the Kringle Company, a tech company that makes a gift-giving app. The company has been doing well, and Nicholas, the CEO, is about to retire and name a new CEO at the party. Several of the VPS: Greg, VP of Sales, Michael, VP of IT, and Jennifer, VP of something else (I forget what) are all squabbling over who should become the next CEO. Meanwhile, Christy, the VP of HR is drinking to excess and chasing an oblivious Greg using increasingly sexual advances. Greg, alongside competing for the CEO spot, is trying to win back his beloved Alexa, Nicholas’ assistant. In addition to the conflict over the promotion, Nicholas is also dealing with his wife Margaret, who is desperate for a family and ends up briefly kidnapping two children, and with an apparent leak in the company selling trade secrets to a rival corporation. When Alexa ends up murdered, the gruff, hard-boiled Detective Jingles shows up dressed as an elf because he was voluntold by his captain that he’d be participating in children’s fundraiser that just so happens to be next door. Jingles investigates and finds that most of the people in the company have some motive to kill Alexa, but he ultimately unmasks the killer, the spy, and the kidnapper. No spoilers, but you can buy the rights to put on Cutthroat Christmas from Knock ‘Em Dead Scripts if you’d like to know how it turns out, or put on the show with your own theatre company.

As I said, this performance was a staged reading, which is a somewhat odd performance genre—not quite a full show, but more than a simple reading aloud. There were portions of the show that the actors did fully act out, portions minimally performed, and portions that got reduced to a soundscape (for instance, the two kidnapped children weren’t in the readthrough, we just got a reading of the stage directions related to them). But having most of the actors who played the original cast worked really well for this reading because they were able to very effectively bring back their original mannerisms from the full production. This is one of the challenging things about something like a staged reading, is that an actor needs to bring the character to life and flesh out the performance, but without the full production experience that can be more difficult to do. However, having most of the actors reprise their roles solved that problem. For instance, Nate Schierman knew when to vacillate between Michael’s pompous overconfidence and his anxious sense of inferiority. And Nicole Summers brought back the robotic voice with which Alexa periodically answers practical questions—part of the overall gag about Alexa sharing a name with the virtual assistant program.