Nina Metz has the Tribune reviews of "the tim&micah project: VERSUS" ★★★ at Donny's Skybox in Piper's Alley (left), as well as the double bill of The Katydids and The Good Time Gang ★★½ at iO. Read her On the Fringe column here.

 
“Irving Berlin's White Christmas” is new to Chicago, playing through Jan. 2 at the Bank of America Theatre; contact www.broadwayinchicago.com.

• HOLIDAY GUIDE: Making a list of our top-10 most anticipated shows of the season (posted Nov. 24)

So here's a trio of Christmas questions: When does a mere reprise become a beloved tradition? Does a tradition need to be kept fresh? And can that beloved tradition lapse back into a burned-out reprise? Or — to put this another way — do you really want to see the same old shows every December?

I realize this is a sensitive issue. At this time of year, we crave traditions. For various reasons, my family has never done the same thing on New Year's Eve twice. We're not even in a consistent place. But I wish we did, and I wish we were. I'd like to be with the same people doing much the same thing, marking the too-rapid passage of time with people I can count on.

For many people, going with loved ones to, say, “A Christmas Carol” at the Goodman Theatre, or one of the live productions of “It's a Wonderful Life,” is part of celebrating the season with similarly comforting certainty. Arts devotees, and critics, tend to crave new works at all times of the year, but box-office sales show that many folks favor familiar titles. (I don't recommend “Peter Pan” at the Lookingglass Theatre, but I'm not surprised at its box-office success.) The seasonal magic works just as well with shows people have seen before — head out to “Wicked” in coming weeks, and you'll discover that many of the people sitting around you aren't exactly defying gravity for the first time.

Former "Saturday Night Live" cast member Nora Dunn is to preview various parts of her new solo show "Mythic Proportions" at the i.O. comedy theater located at 3541 N. Clark St., artistic director Charna Halpern said Wednesday.

Dunn, who lives in Chicago, will bill her shows as "Nora Dunn's Mythical Proportions, A Staged Work in Progress." They'll take place on the four Thursdays in January; tickets are $12.

THEATER REVIEW: "Christmas Smackdown" ★★★ Through Dec. 22 in the Del Close Theater at i.O., 3541 N. Clark St.; Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes; Tickets: $14 at 773-880-0199 or chicago.ioimprov.com

“Christmas Smackdown” begins with a song about a suicide hotel — in which the big question is whether to hang the mistletoe or oneself — and ends with a little riff on the joys of cannibalism. Apart from that, it's quite the cheery holiday show.

This fully scripted, four-person musical revue at i.O. is the work of the Los Angeles-based Mark Nutter and Cynthia Carle, who not only wrote all the music and lyrics, but jetted into town to direct the performing quartet of Lyndsay Hailey, Tim Soszko, Molly Todd and David Henry Wrigley. Nutter is the creator of “The Bicycle Men,” one of the funniest shows ever to grace i.O. (at least when I was in a seat) and a cultish hit in New York and London.

Nutter is about the closest current thing I know to the '60s satirist Tom Lehrer. He writes these zany, old-fashioned comic songs with fiendishly clever lyrics and deviously absurd and gently anarchic sensibilities. One of his solo albums is titled “Twisted Songs for Twisted Sophisticates,” and if you add the word “Christmas” in there somewhere, you'll get a pretty apt description of the nature of the merriment here.

The “Christmas Smackdown” has been a fixture in North Hollywood for the last few years under the title “The Christmas Suicide Hotel”; this year marks its first Chicago appearance. It's not one of those loud and campy, anti-holiday takedowns nor any kind of juvenile romp — Nutter and Carle are no 20-somethings — but rather a slightly warped version of one of those old TV holiday specials. “The Dirt on the Minstrel,” a faux-medieval ditty, would have been perfectly at home on “The Tonight Show's” Mighty Carson Art Players. (Nutter, incidentally, has served his years in writing for television.)

There are many digressions into the absurd. One of the 20 songs, titled “Lotion Samples,” is dedicated entirely to the small bottles of toiletries that are invariably, assuming your life is as sad as mine, the most exciting things in your hotel room. It is apropos of nothing, of course, and thus all the funnier.

Another highlight is “The Sky Mall Song,” an ode to the time-killing cornucopia of high-tech, wholly useless goodies whose delights can be vicariously sampled at 30,000 feet from the seat pocket in front of you. But I think I laughed hardest at “Present,” Hailey's hilarious solo that mocks familial gift-giving: “Dearest Brother, how do you do./ Take this gift/ it's nothing special/ just like you.” Or, “Little Andrew, you precious boy./ I thought I'd save you time/ so here's a broken toy.”

Or — and this was my personal favorite — “Daddy, Here's a DVD/ of your colonoscopy/ good luck getting that exchanged.”

The terrific Hailey also has a very amusing song called “Angels,” which suggests that guardian angels are assigned rather like seats on an airplane. The elite fliers get the good ones; the rest of us get the clapped-out wings in our faces. I could go on through the “Severed Swedish Heads” (the very picture should help with your day) or the songs that poke fun at fundamentalism. But such pleasures await in real, seasonal time. Should one be reeling from a relationship breakup, the climactic song “All the Best” totally nails the way the horrors of past betrayals and breakups seem to come to the psychological fore at Christmas, as if they were Rudolph's nose rushing through the fog.

The production values are, as one might expect at this venue, minimal, although Lisa McQueen tinkles a mean set of keys. But there's a bar in the back, a warm atmosphere, four amusing and quite decent singers on the stage, and a mature feast of funny holiday songs. All for $14.

(Posted by Kevin Pang)

The Chicago comedy diaspora continues toward 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Having already added Second City’s Tom Flanigan and Shelly Gossman to the writing staff of “Saturday Night Live,” the show has hired two more Chicagoans for its upcoming 36th season.

Though NBC would not confirm the hires, iO Theater founder Charna Halpern said that Paul Brittain (left) and Vanessa Bayer, veterans of the Chicago improv scene, are joining “SNL’s” cast.

Brittain currently performs in the improv troupe Mike Helicopter at iO and was a member of the acclaimed iO team Rattlesnake High. Bayer is a member of Revolver at iO and stars in the acerbic puppet show “Felt,” as well as in the Annoyance Theatre’s “Swear Jar.”

“SNL” producer Lorne Michaels was in town with a team of writers in early August to scout for talent. Brittain and Bayer were among four Chicago actors who were flown to New York for second auditions.

“I’m so excited. I’m so proud. It’s amazing,” Halpern said Friday. “It totally reinforces that Chicago is the place to be if you want to be in comedy.”

When redevelopment plans were announced in 2008 for the 3500 block of N. Clark Street — a strip that includes the i.O. (formerly Improv Olympic) — theater owner Charna Halpern wasn't that worried. After all, the developer, Steven Schultz, was her cousin. 

Schultz was the reason Halpern got her plum Wrigleyville locale at 3541 N. Clark  in the first place. That was back in 1995. Since then, i.O. has helped train and feature a plethora of blue-chip comedy talent. And, Halpern says, a steady stream of improvisers and paying viewers have been good for local businesses. In interviews at the time, Halpern said that she expected i.O. would get a temporary location just behind its current spot — and then a new theater in the new development.

But Halpern now says that things have changed, her cousin won't talk to her, and that she worries she will have to find a new home within a year. (Schultz couldn't be reached for comment Thursday night). Current redevelopment plans, which have been the talk of neighborhood meetings this past week (with more to come at the weekend) don't include i.O.

"I have been in business for thirty years and I am fighting for my life," Halpern said on Thursday night. "A new building could be a $4 or $5 million project, and I don't know if banks are handing out loans to improv theaters"

And thus Halpern has been rallying improvisers to her cause. A group came together for a we-shall-not-be-moved photograph on Thursday night, and a "Save Wrigleyville" Facebook site has appeared in recent days. i.O. is its most prominent cause.

When Chicago buildings are razed to make way for condos and retail developments, existing theatrical tenants often get pushed out for those able to pay higher rents. So when it was announced recently that the real estate developer Steven Schultz was planning a nine-story development and hotel in the big parcel of land he owns on Clark Street, just south of Wrigley Field, you'd think that would be bad news for i.O., which inhabits that very block.

But this isn't the usual state of affairs. Schultz is the cousin of Charna Halpern (right), the longtime improv guru and owner of i.O. And Halpern's cousin is taking good care of her.

According to Halpern, Schultz is going to build her "an amazing state-of-art space" for her famous comedic operation, replete with a new, separate bar with windows on Clark Street (a potential moneymaker, to say the least). The new building, Halpern says, would contain two theaters, along with lots of classroom space for her training program.  Currently, the i.O. bar is inside the theater, which limits its use.

While the new building is being constructed, plans call for Schultz to build a temporary bar and i.O. space behind the Wrigleyville Goose Island brewpub. "When the new theater is done," Halpern says, "I will also have the temporary space for use as well. So I might end up with four theaters."

She may rent out some of those spaces to other companies, making Clark St. much more of a center for improv and sketch comedy.

All of this has to play out, of course. But we should all have such cousins.