Christmas in August sounds like one of those things retailers do to test out their seasonal lines, but the fairy lit Christmas tree in Pleasance 2 is for Chriskirkpatrickmas: A Boy Band Christmas Musical, a new musical fresh from the US that blends A Christmas Carol with nineties boy bands.
It’s 2009, and with NSYNC still on hiatus, Chris Kirkpatrick is holding a Christmas Eve party, the rest of the band have all turned up…except Justin. Of course, JT is doing just fine without the band that made him famous, but Chris is struggling to be someone other than Chris from NSYNC and is holding out against all hope for a reunion tour.
A la Dickens, Chris Kirkpatrick is visited by the ghost of Marky Mark (not Mark Wahlberg who is very much still alive) turning back the clock to the band’s earliest days, before painting Justin as the villain who would eventually break up NSYNC.
With plenty of Easter eggs for the band’s fans, Chriskirkpatrickmas: A Boy Band Christmas Musical manages to both give a history of the world famous band, while providing its audience with a Santa’s sack full of entertainment.
Creator Valen Shore plays Chris, and pours their heart and soul into the performance, the rest of the hardworking cast multi-role their way through band members, as well as those involved with the band’s creation, such as Lou Pearlman. The songs all have a distinct boy-band-at-the-turn-of-the-millennium sound without risking any copyright issues. The staging may have that rough around the edges look, so typical of fringe, but the music and vocals are all top of the Billboard charts.
Without painting Chris Kirkpatrick as a miserly Scrooge (he’s shown as an all-round good guy) the ghost of Christmas past concept initially seems a little out of place. But it becomes clear that the redemption, or more accurately, reinvention of the former celebrity becomes the heart-warming moral of this Christmas carol.
Chriskirkpatrickmas: A Boy Band Christmas Musical is a gloriously inventive and hilarious homage to the phenomenon of the boyband, and it comes together just as perfectly as one of those NSYNC harmonies.
