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Frost bite
John Kuntz and the Kringle Kult
BY SALLY CRAGIN

When it comes to Christmas, some people think of candy canes and evergreen boughs, the expectant faces of little children, and the smell of pies baking. Award-winning area playwright/actor John Kuntz has a more complicated relationship with the holiday. This year, when he contemplated Yuletide, he thought of Smurfs and slapstick, talking balls of bellybutton lint, and drag queens, all of which you’ll find in his new farce, My Life with the Kringle Kult: A Holiday Comedy, which Boston Theatre Works will open next Friday. The author of such quirky one-man fare as Freaks!, Starfuckers, and Actorz . . . with a Z and of the macabre plays Jump Rope and Sing Me to Sleep, Kuntz wanted to offer a counterbalance to the other holiday-themed shows for theatergoers, so "they can see A Christmas Carol and something they probably shouldn’t bring the kids to."

Which is just a sidestep away from Kuntz’s previous holiday project — a two-season star turn as Crumpet the elf in Steven Maler’s acclaimed production of David Sedaris’s The Santaland Diaries. This year, Jason Southerland, the artistic director of Boston Theatre Works, asked Kuntz to write an original Christmas play. "It’s the first commission I had," confesses the playwright, who’s currently a graduate student in Boston University’s playwriting program as well as a commissioned fellow in the Huntington Theatre Company’s Breaking Ground new-play-reading series. "I was afraid I would be confined and uninspired because of the subject matter, but I was able to say everything I wanted to say."

He began writing in July, "a surreal time to be thinking about Christmas," and came up with a plot that "centers on this cult on another planet where Santa and the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny live with Smurfs and mermaids and everything fantastic." Here, Santa rules with a fur-lined fist, and he "tells his followers that earth is where they go when they die, because it’s wonderful there." Although Santa remains unseen, his "Kringle Kult" makes toys all the time.

Kuntz wrote himself in as cult leader Karl Kringle. Laura Napoli plays Twinkle, "a sweet girl elf who’s inducting the other elves into the fold." Rick Park, a Kuntz favorite ("All my plays have a part for him to appear in drag"), plays a wealthy baroness "who wants to give everything to Santa but won’t until she can see him face to face."

Kuntz adds, "Everything ends up, if not happy, then not un-happy. I don’t want to bum people out completely." He does enjoy some aspects of Christmas — "the whole frenzy with the shopping and the panic attacks." One time, he says, he even succumbed to "last-minute midnight shopping. I bought presents at the convenience store. I was desperate and I bought my friend a box of York peppermint patties and then I made up some story like ‘Don’t you love these?’ and she was like, ‘No, not really.’ I said, ‘I thought they were your favorite.’ I just lied."

More recently, Kuntz has had a fraught relationship with the holiday. "Christmas is a tough time, you’re under so much pressure to be happy. I have sad memories because I lost a parent during the holiday. There’s a lot of talk about being together with your family at Christmas, so you can get to be resentful of the image people use to advertise it. But I shouldn’t paint it all black and white because I have so many good memories from when you’re a child and you believe that Santa could actually exist." His favorite gift when he was a child was "that blow-up clown that’s weighted on the base. I came down on Christmas morning and I saw it all inflated and punched it right on the nose."

My Life with the Kringle Kult: A Holiday Comedy will be presented by Boston Theatre Works November 28 through December 13 at the Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont Street in the South End. Tickets are $25; $20 for seniors and students; call (617) 426-2787.


Issue Date: November 21 - 27, 2003
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