STAGE REVIEW : A Merry Kitschmas With Sal and Amanda Gecko

The spoof begins with the program notes. Sal and Amanda Gecko aren’t just any old show-biz couple: they are a pair of really special lounge lizards.

“Their true passion--the live stage--beckoned with a pull too powerful to ignore,” says the playbill for their Christmas show at the Backstage Theatre. And so they “abandoned the fast-sell facade of Tinseltown for the more meaningful cabaret environment.”

These kids could put David Letterman’s epic novelty acts to shame. “Their finest achievement,” for example, “was being asked to contribute a musical moment to the inauguration of Richard Milhous Nixon.” They obliged with a performance “in front of over 300 shoppers and 25 television sets in the electronics department” of a major discount store. So don’t think they’re not ready for Vegas.

In fact, when we meet them in “Christmas With Sal and Amanda Gecko,” they are celebrating the Yuletide season at home awaiting the arrival of yet another invitation to perform--not at President-elect Clinton’s upcoming inauguration, but at Caesars Palace. To appear in that most meaningful cabaret environment of all--the Las Vegas Strip on New Year’s Eve--would be the crowning achievement of their career.

As deadpan sendups by George Quick and Beth Hansen, Sal and Amanda personify twin peaks of bad taste. The show itself is a nonstop revue of holiday pop songs, most of them chosen for their parodistic value as kitsch. Highlights among more than two dozen selections are “Santa Baby,” “Hawaiian Christmas Song” and “Mail Call,” along with a marathon “bell” medley that crams in snippets of everything from “Jing Jingaling” to “Ring Them Bells” to “Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead.”

Hansen comes on like the consummate grande dame of schlock. Her breathy-voiced Amanda is a bewigged, platinum-blond hybrid of Miss Piggy, Tammy Faye Baker and Mae West. She is dolled up in lounging pajamas trimmed with gold tinsel and accessorized with trinkets befitting a Christmas tree. She is also wearing what may be the world’s longest, furriest pair of fake eyelashes, which she bats almost as often as she breathes. The total combination is a benchmark of sorts for mawkish sincerity and cheap glamour.

Quick delivers a low-rent version of Engelbert Humperdinck, aping the worst possible saloon-singer cliches with pinpoint accuracy. He also tosses in a suggestion of Elvis with his warbling baritone and evokes memories of everyone from Dean Martin getting sloshed to Bill Murray doing smarmy crooners in his old “Saturday Night Live” routine.

But nobody, not even Elvis, ever dressed as tackily as Sal, who looks like the Christmas revenge of the ‘70s complete with sideburns. Sal has on chartreuse slacks and a lime-green cummerbund, a red tuxedo jacket trimmed with gold tinsel, white shoes and a ruffled shirt unbuttoned to show his pale, skinny, decidedly unsexy chest.

Though the Backstage is a tiny venue, both Sal and Amanda are never without their hand-held mikes--or almost never (Sal needs both hands to pour a drink). Cabaret performers of their ilk probably sing in the shower and converse over breakfast through hand-held mikes. Neither Quick nor Hansen requires voice amplification, but they exploit it with fetishistic zeal as part of their parody. Not incidentally, without breaking character, they also sign 8-by-10 glossies for Sal-and-Amanda fans in the lobby after the show.

The Geckos are accompanied on piano by Maury Feinstein (Randy Woltz), who exhibits the Jewish spirit of Christmas by wearing a green yarmulke, and on drums by Murray Feinstein (Nick DeGregorio), whose last big gig at “the Boise Best Western” probably was nondenominational.

For all the appeal of its campy excesses, however, the show loses momentum about halfway through. Even at a mere hour and 15 minutes, it has the feel of an extended sketch that goes on too long. It would be more entertaining at half an hour, just long enough for us to enjoy the performers without tiring of sameness of their material.

‘Christmas With Sal and Amanda Gecko’

An Actors Cabaret Ensemble production in association with the Backstage Theatre Company. Directed by George Quick. With Quick, Beth Hansen, Randy Woltz and Nick DeGregorio. Dialogue: Allison E. Wood. Choreography: Trixie Hunter. Costumes: Delores of Huntington Beach. Lighting: Nancy Staiger. Through Dec. 20 at the Backstage Theatre, 1599 Superior Ave., Suite B2, Costa Mesa. Performances Fridays and Saturdays at 9 p.m.; also Sunday, Dec. 20, at 9 p.m. $15. (714) 646-5887. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.