New Year's Eve comes early with 'Striking 12' New Year's Eve comes early with 'Striking 12' (December 03, 2004)

TheatreWorks opens holiday show at Lucie Stern Theatre

By Julie O'Shea

During a time of year when most playhouses are busy dusting off their "Christmas Carols," "Nutcrackers" and "Secret Gardens," TheatreWorks has decided to give its audiences a completely different holiday treat.

In a production unlike anything the company has staged before, TheatreWorks, under the direction of Ted Sperling, will open "Striking 12" this Saturday at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto.

What makes this relatively new production so unique is that it has no actors, at least in the traditional sense. Rather, the story, inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Match Girl," is told entirely through the song and music of GrooveLily, a three-member pop-rock band from New York City.

With the help of playwright-lyricist Rachel Sheinkin, the show was created and written by GrooveLily's husband-and-wife team Valerie Vigoda and Brendan Milburn. The couple suggested in early 2002 that the band really ought to have its own holiday show.

Less than a year later, they got their wish when "Striking 12" opened at Philadelphia's Prince Music Theater to rave reviews. In 2003, the band revised its musical-concert while performing it at TheatreWorks' New Works Festival.

"The show asks the audience to do a lot more imagining than other shows do," said Gene Lewin, the band's drummer. "It's been pretty consistent. ... Audiences have been, by and large, really willing to go there."

Essentially a concert with a loose storyline, "Striking 12" cuts back and forth through time and location, from present day New York to 1840s Denmark. GrooveLily's three musicians -- Lewin, Milburn on keyboard and Vigoda playing the electric violin -- alternate between contemporary characters and those from Andersen's children's fairytale.

"We play off each other well," said Milburn, a San Francisco native who attended college at New York University.

Milburn plays a grumpy, anti-New-Year's Eve guy to Vigoda's hapless light-bulb seller, who tries to get him to change his ways. And Lewin wears many different hats, at one point even playing the part of an elderly woman.

"We make a big noise for three people," said Vigoda, who started the band in 1994. "We've done a lot of road warrior work. We're pretty well honed."

The group has played in cities across the nation. And while record producers seemed to like the band's eclectic beat, they weren't sure exactly what to do with it, repeatedly telling the struggling artists: "We love your music, but it's a little too Broadway for us."

A few years later, an idea finally came.

On short breaks from the band, Vigoda, who has a background in classical music, has performed with Cyndi Lauper, Joe Jackson, Cher and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, a group that performs heavy metal Christmas songs each December.

Milburn took in a Trans-Siberian holiday concert one year and suddenly had an epiphany: "Why aren't we doing this?"

It was shortly after that night that GrooveLily regrouped and started writing "Striking 12" with the help of Sheinkin, a faculty member at New York University's Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program.

Listening to the title song of band's "Little Light" album, Sheinkin was the first to comment that the lyrics reminded her of "The Little Match Girl."

In the song, Vigoda sings: "I always thought I'd set the world on fire/With my dreams as kindling, the match was my desire.

"I'll be shinning like a beacon/When the other embers are dying/I'll be flying like an eagle/Burning up the skyline, or die trying."

E-mail Julie O'Shea at joshea@mv-voice.com

Information

What: TheatreWorks presents "Striking 12" by Valerie Vigoda, Brendan Milburn and Rachel Sheinkin Where: Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto When: Tuesdays at 7:30 p.m.; Wednesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 8 p.m. with additional 2 p.m. performances on Dec. 11 and Dec. 18; Sundays at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. ( 2 p.m. performance only Jan. 2). No performances Dec. 24-26 and Dec. 28. Closes Jan. 2. Cost: $20-$48 Call: 903-6000 or visit theatreworks.org.

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