If you don’t know Amy & Freddy, a cabaret duo who performs around town and tours the national lounge circuit with comedy and music, Amy Armstrong is a Broadway belter and a cocky comedienne in the Totie Fields/Roseanne tradition who uses her ample girth as the butt of her jokes—often literally—while pianist Freddy Allen uses his schoolboy looks and reserved manner as a “straight” man to Amy, despite often being the butt of gay fashion jokes. That both have talent there is no doubt, but it doesn’t seem well-served in their first-ever holiday revue which promises no “cute children, staged nativity scenes involving real livestock, singing and/or dancing Santas, figure skaters, elves, scenic backdrops of quaint villages and fake snow.” What it offers as a substitute are sophomoric jokes and stale satiric songs about Yuletide flatulence, booze, oral sex, drinking, getting laid, destroying toys, unbearable holiday get-togethers and more drinking. “Don’t you just love booze?” Amy asks in a Rockette-like Santa outfit that reveals her rotund figure to its bowl-full-of-jelly shaking maximum. “Yeah! Yeah!” clamors the crowd, most of whom are feeling no pain and who are talking, heckling and singing along all evening as if the show were their own. And that, after all, may be exactly the point. (Dennis Polkow)
Fri-Sat/10pm. Lakeshore Theater, 3175 N. Broadway, (773)472-3492. $25. Through Dec 15.
