Christmas on the Air: A Musical Revue, hosted by Rick Cluff and Red Robinson, at Kay Meek Centre, Saturday, Nov. 30, 8 p.m. For more information visit kaymeekcentre.com/on_ stage/1793.
The boy walks into the radio station where he's quickly ushered into the theatre.
The show is about to begin.
Before TV antennae sprouted in living rooms around the world like a silver-coloured crop, radio was the medium that bonded listeners during times of emergency as well as revelry.
Red Robinson, Rick Cluff and a host of colourful characters ranging from an Asian Elvis Presley to Hot Mammas to an impressionist who becomes George Burns, Groucho Marx and John Lennon in the course of a single night are attempting to resurrect that magic with a December performance set for the Kay Meek Centre.
Christmas on the Air: A Musical Revue is a loosely scripted variety show featuring holiday songs from the 1940s through the 1960s.
"They always wanted to focus around the music of that era.. .. Because that's when radio was live," says Mary Ella Young, the show's director and a member of The Hot Mammas "It's an idea that stems from the days when you could go in and be part of a radio show," Robinson agrees. "I was around for those days, you could go into a radio station, they'd have a theatre holding maybe 100, 120 people, and put on a radio show."
For Robinson the show is both a whimsical trip into the joys of yesteryear as well as a rebuke to the foes of holly.
"I don't think you can even mention the word 'Christmas' in school now but it was all part of our heritage the way we grew up," he says. "Christmas is something we should protect. They say, 'Oh, it may offend the people coming in.' Well then ask yourself: 'Why the hell are they coming here?' I mean, c'mon, that's part of our tradition. Otherwise you're saying Canada had no tradition, which is crap."
When asked about his own memories of Christmas, Robinson invokes a line from the holiday classic, A Christmas Story: "You're gonna put your eye out, kid," he chortles. "That's the era that I grew up in."
Robinson recalls pressing his nose to the glass of a Vancouver department store and dreaming about wielding his own Red Ryder BB gun.
"I still have mine, by the way," he adds.
Christmas on the Air is an attempt to recapture the mood of that period.
"It's fun, it's light, it's entertaining, it makes you feel good," Young says.
The Arkansas native who now makes her home on the North Shore was reluctant to take a seat in the director's chair.
"Never directed. Never really thought I would direct, but they had a confidence in me I probably didn't have in myself," she says.
Following "a lot of nudging" from Carole Robinson, the show's producer and Red's wife, Young accepted.
However, it turned out the cast didn't need many pointers.
"They really know what they're doing so they don't need a lot of direction," she says.
Much of the show's ad-libbing takes place in the interplay between Robinson and the CBC's Rick Cluff.
"As we've done more shows they've become closer and so they take more liberties with one another and it gets more and more fun," she says. "They tease each other, they joke around, jabs here and there and they're not as polite as they were the first go-round."
Robinson agrees.
"Rick Cluff and myself just really enjoy it because we're the narrators. And why do we love it? Because if it was a play. .. we'd have to memorize all the lines and go to rehearsals. Not this way. You've got the script in front of you and you cup your hand over your hear and go into it."
While Young oversees technical details ranging from lighting to microphone placement, she defines herself primarily as a performer.
"I, first and foremost, am a Hot Mamma. I mean the group," she adds hastily.
Featuring Julie Brown and Georgina Arntzen, the trio deals in tight harmonies and short, peppy tunes like "Mr. Sandman" and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy."
"I did not come up with the name," Young stipulates, smiling as she tells the story.
The moniker grew from an argument about whether an audience would go to see three old ladies.
"We're not old ladies. We're hot mammas!" Julie Brown allegedly replied.
"They call themselves The Hot Mammas - that's because they're having flashes, but that's OK," Robinson says, laughing.
Featuring swing dancers, vintage footage of Robinson introducing The Beatles and Elvis Presley, and songs like "Run Rudolph Run," "'Zat You, Santa Claus?" and "The Man with the Bag," Christmas on the Air is a genuine variety show.
"It gave you that variety feeling that you don't get on television anymore. There's hardly any variety shows. I know why, because they're expensive," Robinson says.
The storied DJ speaks in glowing tones about the variety shows personified by Andy Williams, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin.
"You'll leave going: 'Why don't we do this anymore?'"
