Fa La La La La Holiday Special Whatever celebrates all the holidays with silly comedy

Despite the carol referenced in its name, the Fa La La La La Holiday Special Whatever isn’t focused on Christmas or even on the winter holidays.

“The idea is something very different from any other type of holiday fare,” said Elizabeth Lord, who’s producing and performing in the show, happening Friday, Dec. 17, and featuring such familiar local performers as Lauren O’Neill, Amy Shephard and String and Shadow Puppet Theater’s Emily McHugh and Donald Palardy. Also featured are Aaron Bredlau, Mirrah Stoller and Marlo Winter.

“We were like, ‘Why limit it to holidays in December? Let’s celebrate all the holidays,’ ” Lord told The Olympian. “We tasked ourselves with trying to highlight as many different and under-celebrated holidays as we could.”

Take, for example, Cinco de Mayo. The holiday, which is a minor one in Mexico but widely celebrated in the United States, marks a Mexican victory in battle during the Franco-Mexican war.

“I’ll be portraying Gen. Ignacio Zaragoza, who led the Mexican army against invading French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1682,” said Luz Gaxiola, a clown and accordionist recently seen in both Lord’s annual vaudeville show and String and Shadow’s “Fauna Fantastique.”

That might sound like awfully weighty material for a clown, even one with serious training. (Gaxiola has studied at both the San Francisco Clown Conservatory and Dell’Arte School of Physical Theatre in Blue Lake, Calif.)

But it won’t be.

“It will be a very serious role in a very silly act,” she told The Olympian, adding that the act will be performed in Spanish. “I won’t be in clown makeup, but the performance is a slapstick clown act.”

She’ll also play accordion in the show, as she does in the often-masked String and Shadow Cartoon Orchestra, a trio that also includes Palardy and Francis Brennan, Gaxiola’s partner.

Merry mischief is the theme of the show, a successor to Lord’s 2013 Alternative Holiday Show. It also will include echoes of “The Bubble,” a variety show/game show hybrid that Lord and O’Neill hosted in 2019.

“It’s going to be some extremely ridiculous comedy,” Gaxiola said. “It’s pretty absurd.”

Fa La La La La Holiday Special Whatever

• What: This variety show, featuring storyteller-host-impresario Elizabeth Lord and friends, is described as “a Festivus for the rest of us.”
• When: 7 and 9 p.m. Friday, Dec. 17
• Where: Cryptatropa Bar, 421 Fourth Ave. E., Olympia
• Tickets: $15-$35 donation suggested at the door. Cash and Venmo accepted.
• Also: Cryptatropa is open only to people 21 and older. Proof of vaccination is required.