Recap A John Waters Christmas at the Barrymore Theatre

It was as if John Waters slipped onto the subject of Christmas while presiding over a small gathering of pleasantly drunken pals. “Boy, you really make me feel like Johnny Mathis, thank you,” he said after taking the Barrymore Theatre’s stage in a deeply and beautifully orange suit Wednesday. Waters’ tight, continuous monologue just as casually slipped off the subject of Christmas here and there, too, though he went heavy on the theme throughout, proclaiming himself “torn between capitalism and anarchy, needy, greedy, horny for presents, and filled by an unnatural desire to please.” For the most part, the 65-year-old filmmaker came off as not just the transgressive, perverse spirit behind Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble, but as one of the few celebrities truly worth envying, a fellow who conquers the profane and the sophisticated in one mischievously smooth motion.

Waters’ one-man act often served as simply an outlet for demented ideas for conceptual holiday parties, defacing Christmas cards, pitches for rehashes of favorite Christmas movies (one involving Chucky and “angry Smile Train children”), and even strange Christmas sex acts. When Waters wasn’t quite on-topic, it was if nothing else an excuse to hear such phrases as “...heterosexual folk dances like the Electric Slide”; “I have a Unabomber birdhouse”; and “Oprah’s gone, so it’s only me.” He handled it all with a venerable artist’s confidence and deft comic timing, even when dipping into stuff that seemed beneath him: “I hate to tell you this: Your cat hates you.”

A “war on Christmas” enthusiast watching the show might conclude that the greatest threat to the holiday would be Waters’ fanatical, gleefully gay attack from within. “I love Christmas so much I could fuckin’ shit,” he said early on, and more often than not, he celebrated the Little Lord’s birthday by suggesting ways to improve it. “I can buy a fuckin’ pear,” he said in a takedown of banal gift baskets. “Gift baskets should have things you’d never buy: cigarettes, sex toys, diet pills!”

Like any good public speaker or conversational partner, Waters proved himself a barrel of wonderfully mismatched interests. He discussed Ike and Tina Turner and the art of Andy Warhol and Cy Twombly within minutes of each other. One detour covered his obsession with covering novelizations of movies, and others gave a confident stamp of approval to Justin Bieber and the new series of Alvin And The Chipmunks movies. He also knew when to put himself down a little bit: “I’m over-exposed. Have you ever seen a documentary I’m not in?” Mere movie-business name-checking became fun again in Waters’ set: He recalled seeing Angela Lansbury in a New York City sex club, and getting mistaken for Steve Buscemi on a plane, only to later have Buscemi tell him, “You think that’s bad? People think I’m Don Knotts.” He discoursed on what the threatened bad child’s Christmas gift of sticks and stones would be like if designed by various contemporary artists, and submitted that having the tree fall over would make any family’s Christmas more fun.

Waters “encored” with a brief Q&A session, and was uncannily quick enough to make even that often coma-inducing exercise fruitful. When an audience member asked who was on his “fantasy fuck list,” Waters replied: “Kevin Federline, if he wins Excess Baggage... in a threesome with Alvin.”

Arguably, you’ll be just fine if none of the old folks at your holiday family gathering admits wanting to fuck a cartoon character. But then again, you’ll be overjoyed if someone hijacks your Christmas anywhere near as engagingly and commandingly as Waters.