Expect the unexpected when you unwrap this year’s festive offering from Theatre iNQ!
Xmas Krackers opens with a wonderfully cheesy exchange between Zim Ding (Ashleigh Dodson) and Zim Dong (Nicholas Rose) who deliver a series of corny Christmas jokes – some likely rejected from the bon-bon factory for being a little too risqué. The pair introduces the audience to this year’s line of hot new Christmas gifts and issues a few instructions that will ultimately move the show along in an unpredictable fashion.
Next, we meet the five ‘professional idiots’ (Michael Doris, Michael Gleeson, Emma Lamberton, Keely Pronk and Paris Walsh). They’re assigned the role of a Kracker family member at random and chaos rapidly descends. The Krackers’ non-stop, high-speed antics will constantly have you asking yourself ‘what the heck are they doing now?“
The show can best be described as “theatre sports on krack’. There is a loose course of action mapped out for the actors, though it is never quite apparent to the unsuspecting audience. I must be very clear: if you’re seeking a strong narrative structure and a heavy dose of warm ‘moral-to-the-story’, this is not the show for you. Theatre iNQ has instead dished up the stage equivalent of Christmas trifle, layered with all the ingredients of the quintessential Aussie Christmas. The combo – which shouldn’t make sense, but somehow just does – includes lashings of peculiar family games, Christmas sing-a-longs, confessions from the loo, unexpected drop-ins and the usual family tensions. The outrageously funny and wonderfully in-sync cast is the custard holding the whole crazy thing together. Anyone who’s ever dabbled in a spot of theatre games will be wildly impressed by their ability to maintain focus in the face of uncertainty for a full 90 minutes.
Xmas Krackers is a side-splittingly funny and dizzyingly fast hybrid of the frankly weird shit that unfolds in Aussie households at Christmas and in rehearsals rooms at any given time.
Go with an open mind and prepare for a wild ride.
Catch Xmas Krackers until 10 December 2022.
