“Christmas at the Old Bull and Bush” is a wonderful escape from reality
Catherine Flye's Christmas confection, now at MetroStage, pays tribute to the British music halls of yore
“I sometimes feel I was born out of time,” says Albert Coia. “I think to myself, ‘Mmm, maybe if I had been alive in the 1920s, I might have been a music hall star.'”
The actor is currently stealing scenes in Christmas at the Old Bull and Bush, a show set in 1918, in a storied British pub. “I play Bertie Ramsbottom, the tipsy regular,” Coia says. “He’s at the bar drinking, and he keeps interrupting the Chairman — the master of ceremonies — with jokes and silly questions. He’s a fly in the ointment, as it were.”
In one of show’s most side-splitting skits, Coia’s Bertie lands in the lap of the Chairman, and the pair turns the tearjerker “Sonny Boy” into a comedic ventriloquist’s act. “I do my face with teeth sticking out and a line around my chin,” says Coia. “It’s to look like I’ve got one of those floppy wooden chins.”
Created by the British-born Catherine Flye, Christmas at the Old Bull and Bush originally played in Arena Stage’s now-shuttered Old Vat Room, where it enjoyed a successful six-year run from 1997 to 2003. In 2017, Alexandria’s Metro Stage revived Flye’s production to tremendous success. Now in its second year, the seasonal seems to have found a perfect new home.
“I come from that tradition of the English entertainment world,” Flye says. “My mother was a singer, my father used to read poetry and stuff, and I’d always heard these music hall songs.” After marrying an American and moving to the U.S., Flye established herself in the Washington theater scene. (She’s currently playing Grandma in Signature Theatre’s Billy Elliot while her show’s music hall star is portrayed by local theater powerhouse Sherri L. Edelen.)
The current production of Christmas at the Old Bull and Bush also pays tribute to the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, which Flye calls “that dreadful war.” Yet the evening, with its joyous carol sing-alongs and audience joke-telling via Christmas crackers, is lighthearted, cheery, and ultimately spirit-lifting. Notes Flye, “In this world we live in, especially politically now, it’s so important we have something we can escape to. I think this is very apropos for that situation.”
Christmas at the Old Bull and Bush runs to Dec. 30 at MetroStage, 1201 North Royal St., in Alexandria. Tickets are $55. Call 703-548-9044 or visit metrostage.org.
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