It's a Horrible Life-001-001Sick of all the saccharine celebrating of the holiday season? Then hightail it over to Machine (aka The Ramrod Center for the Performing Arts) to see IT’S A HORRIBLE LIFE! Ryan Landry and The Gold Dust Orphans have once again twisted a comely classic to their delightfully demented and off colorful ends! And it’s all in the holiday spirit– but DON’T TAKE THE KIDS. Do take a deep breath and get ready for an onslaught of obscenity, a raft of ribaldry, and find out what Jimmy Stewart and the gang from that Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” have to do with Hitler, Bette Davis, Liberace, Little Edie, Fred and Ginger and Barry and Elliot!

Act I features at least one number that would have given the Andrews Sisters a heart attack and might still get the Orphans arrested in several states: “The Boogie Woogie Baby and The Nativity”!! I laughed my abs off. If you remember the movie– forget it. Uncle Billy doesn’t just lose the legal tender– he switches gender, and the whole show culminates in a pole dance and a murder.

Landry himself plays the evil Mrs Grinchley in a lurid shade of seasonal green make-up, a dusting of sparkles. The performance is a delicious send up of every scoundrel you ever loved to hate, laced with nasty one-liners and as satisfyingly bad for you as a piece of too-damp chocolate cake. Ryan’s dog, the Garbo-esque Rhoda, is featured in one of her most complex roles to date. The whole swingin’ orphanage is in holiday form, tapping, crooning, cavorting in flamboyant costumes, no holds barred production numbers and over the top, special delivery. It’s all directed with split-second timing, seriously smutty sight gags, and voices big and bad enough to blow your Christmas stockings off!

Don’t miss a trip to Bedbug Falls and take a walk on the seedy side of Frank Capra–IT’S A HORRIBLE LIFE will make you glad it’s not yours. Click on the link for TIX! Thursday through Sundays at MACHINE 1254 Boylston Street through December 29!  HO HO HO.