Bob’s Holiday Office Party – Theatre Review

Bob’s Holiday Office Party makes its way to the Atwater Village Theatre for its 21st consecutive year of drunken revelry. I must admit that I’d never heard of this long-running show until seeing it, but now I’ll be hard-pressed to forget.

Most perennial classics tend to wear out their welcome eventually (how many ways can one put a twist on A Christmas Carol?), so it’d be reasonable to fear that Bob’s would have lost some of its bite over the past two decades. Fortunately, the opposite seems to be the case. The cast (most of which have been coming back to Bob’s year after year) have developed such an arresting, natural chemistry that effortlessly carries the audience through 90+ minutes of insanity. In a time when self-obsessed “raunchy comedy” is breaking box-office records, it’s refreshing to see a show so humble and generous in its depravity.