Review: ‘Who’s Holiday!’ Is a Raunchy Riff on Dr. Seuss’s Yuletide Tale

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The playwright Matthew Lombardo likes tough-talking, husky-voiced divas who barrel through life and stage in a blur of campy drama. In his Broadway debut, 2010’s “Looped,” Valerie Harper portrayed the grande dame of the stage Tallulah Bankhead. The following year’s pulpy “High” starred Kathleen Turner as a tough-love nun trying to help drug addicts; a scene in which Ms. Turner calmed down a raving man who had stripped naked remains branded in my memory.

Now, Mr. Lombardo has added Cindy Lou to his gallery. Cindy Lou who? Well, Cindy Lou Who. Last seen as a onesie-wearing 2-year-old in Dr. Seuss’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!,” our heroine (Lesli Margherita) is all grown up and ready to puff on a bong in the R-rated Off Broadway solo comedy “Who’s Holiday!”

The little tyke has become a bottle-blonde adult — Ms. Margherita’s wig, by Charles G. Lapointe, is a roots-showing relative of whatever lived on Elizabeth Berkley’s head in “Showgirls” — who spends her days in a trailer appointed with Airstream functionality and seasonal kitsch by David Gallo.

Although her trailer is parked on the Grinch’s old lair of Mount Crumpit, “that green freak,” as she calls him, is nowhere to be seen. What happened to him and our heroine in the years since he tried to steal her presents is the subject of the show.

You can see why Dr. Seuss Enterprises accused Mr. Lombardo of copyright violation last year, when his play in verse was originally supposed to open with Jennifer Simard (now in “Hello, Dolly!”); he counterattacked in court by arguing for fair use of the original material and won.

The most important development here is that Grinch and Cindy Lou got close — very close. Cindy Lou realized that the Grinch’s heart was his only organ that was two sizes too small; the others, as Mr. Lombardo suggests rather bluntly, were just fine.

More happens, but it is almost besides this hourlong production’s point, which is to watch the brassy, very funny Ms. Margherita (“Matilda the Musical” and “Dames at Sea”) strut her stuff in the designer Jess Goldstein’s festive holiday get-up.

She expertly milks the many double entendres and profane limerick-like rhymes, but this cabaret regular is equally comfortable ad-libbing. (After breaking into a rap at the Sunday matinee, she rasped “I’m out of breath” and reached for a cigarette). She also belts a mean “Blue Christmas.”

Zippily directed by Carl Andress, a regular Charles Busch collaborator who knows his way around an innuendo, the show belongs to the evergreen subgenre of holiday offerings that proffer to dirty up Christmas while ultimately reveling in its spirit.

Tellingly, it loses steam when sentimentality creeps in, and eventually concludes with an earnest singalong of a Yule classic. Even wrapped in raunchy verse, Christmas remains Christmas.