From doo wop to jazz, The Gingerbread Men: A(nother) Holiday Cabaret pays tribute to Christmas classics
“Jingle Bell Rock”, “Holly Jolly Christmas”, and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” are among the festive tunes the crooners crank out
(From left) Brandyn Eddy, Jer Lowe, Brennan Cuff, and Jeffrey Victor in The Gingerbread Men: A Holiday Cabaret, 2023. Photo by Moonrider Productions for the Arts Club Theatre Company
The Arts Club Theatre Company presents The Gingerbread Men: A(nother) Holiday Cabaret from December 5 to 22 at the Newmont Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre
AROUND THIS TIME of year back in 2012, Vancouver musical-theatre performers Brennan Cuff, Brandyn Eddy, Jer Lowe, and Jeffrey Victor were appearing in the Arts Club Theatre Company’s production of White Christmas for the fourth and final year. As with every show during rehearsals, it was a tradition for artists to perform a few songs for Arts Club staff members in a kind of sneak peek. Given that they had been at the show for so long, the team knew exactly what to expect at the “meet and greet”, so Victor decided it was a prime opportunity to play a practical joke. He and the others learned The Drifters’s doo wop version of the production’s titular tune. It turned out to be a hit.
“People loved it and people thought it was hilarious,” Victor relays in a phone interview with Stir. “Shortly afterward we were all mingling around the goodies tray and someone from the marketing team said ‘You guys were fantastic! You should gig around town.’ Then she said ‘What’s the name of your group?’ At that moment I looked down at the cookie in my hand and said ‘Well, we’re called the Gingerbread Men.’”
That was the start of a new venture for the foursome, which is making its third annual trip to the Arts Club stage with The Gingerbread Men: A(nother) Holiday Cabaret. The four gentlemen perform Christmas classics mainly from the 1950s and ’60s in a range of styles, from the aforementioned doo wop to jazz, holiday standards, and a capella, never straying too far from the originals.
“We started learning songs from the yesteryears of the Christmas era—Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Andy Williams, Perry Como—all those Christmases like the ones you used to know,” Victor says. “We started picking up gigs and one gig led to the next and that led into the next one, and sure enough here we are all these years later back at the Arts Club where it all started.
“We like to keep things up-tempo and upbeat and tend to sing the songs that are jovial and bright and fun,” he adds. “In between songs we banter with each other and with the audience. We don’t sing too many ballads—well, we have some, like ‘Silent Night’ and ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’—but we like to keep things upbeat and bright. When we sing ‘Happy Holiday’ it’s an arrangement like the Andy Williams version that everybody knows. With ‘It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year’ we sing an arrangement as the song is written.”
The quartet will be performing on the Newmont Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre, which the members affectionately refer to as The Gingerbread House. The production design by Ted Roberts is what Victor describes as a cross between a 1950s living room and a Bing Crosby TV set, complete with cozy fireplace, Christmas tree, and bar where people can order drinks during the show.
Victor points out that the group is not a barbershop quartet; rather, the four artists form a male singing group who draw from their shared backgrounds in professional musical theatre to sing four-part harmonies in a range of styles, each wearing a green-velvet dinner jacket and signature Santa hat.
“We have this musical theatre background of storytelling through songs, so we’re not just up there singing the songs, we’re telling the story,” Victor says. “We’re all song and dance men. We have fun, interesting choreography to our songs. In our show there’s a secret hidden tap number—no spoilers, we come out and we’re tap dancing and that’s something that certainly differentiates us between us and other groups out there. We are all professional musical theatre Broadway singers and performers.”
What motivates the Gingerbread Men to return to the stage again and again is the pure pleasure the show seems to bring people.
“I think that Christmas is a feeling no matter what you believe,” Victor says. “The unifying takeaway that we’ve noticed all these years is the music. The moment we start singing any of these songs, whether it’s ‘Jingle Bell Rock’, ‘Holly Jolly Christmas’, or ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’—all of those classics—we see it on the faces of the people [in the audience]. It’s a feeling of tenderness and nostalgia that we see. There’s a feeling of warm and cozy memories, sentimental thoughts and feelings.
“We see the joy on people’s faces and that’s what keeps us going all these years,” he continues. “We would have stopped years ago but we realized people keep asking for this. What’s become one of the best comments we ever get is ‘It’s not Christmas until we see the Gingerbread Men.’ We’ve humbly become a staple of the local community and the Lower Mainland and it’s just the most incredible thing to take people through those musical memories of Christmas.” 
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