Had Enough Fa-La-La? Check Out 'The Cool Yule!' At Serendipity Playhouse. By Margaret Regan CHRISTMAS IS OVER. You're tired of the seasonal merriment, the perky carols on the mall's Muzak machine, the plastic Santas on Tucson's low rooftops. All Nutcrackered out, you have no intention of attending one more holiday spectacular show. Yet A Cool Yule! over at Serendipity Playhouse may just correspond to your current mood. This is an edgy Christmas production, a kind of Gaslight gone caustic. It's an astringent musical semi-celebration of the weirdness of an Old Pueblo Christmas, mixed with stiff shots of political and cultural satire. The show's put on by the Babylon Tucson gang, the theatre group that targeted Tucson's political foibles in its opening production last fall and that has ties to the irreverent Sweatlodge comedy team. A Cool Yule! does have a loosely structured Nöel story. Bob Girth (played by co-writer and director Nick Seivert) struggles to celebrate an all-inclusive "Eurocentrically imposed midwinter festival" at his cybercafé at the same time that the cruel Tucson City Council has revoked his license to operate. His sidekicks include a spaced-out computer head (Joseph Romanov), a lovable waitress (Rebecca Spina) and a Christmas-hating Grinch (Nick Cianciotto). The lively cast of seven, backed up by a three-piece band, energetically prances through this material. They belt out such songs as the catchy "Bab-Bab-Babylon Tucson," and send up desert Christmases with fond recollections of making "snow angels" in the frontyard gravel. Within the elastic confines of this story the writers find time to lampoon the eminently lampoonable Arizona International Campus of the University of Arizona and even cruelly satirize Tucson's beloved famous author with a caricature called Barbara Queensolver (Seivert in a wild black wig). Queensolver's been brought into an AIC classroom, a vacuous space nicely pilloried with a backdrop scene painted the dull gray of corporate America, its IBM logo still faintly visible under the new AIC sign. The untenured professor tells his students he managed to keep from getting fired by getting promoted up to the administrative post of vice-provost. The day's guest lecturer, Queensolver, gives the students tips on how to write a best-selling Southwest novel. Her advice, basically, is to stick to clichés. Writers Seivert and Dave Sullivan (Terry Owen and Elliot Glicksman also get a writing credit) also target the rash of local cop and judge arrests, the empty hallways at the Foothills Mall, CAP water and local icons Jane at the Beacon Foundation and Madeline at Szechuan Omei restaurant. The backdrops nicely suggest various Tucson locations, including downtown, "A" Mountain and the plane graveyard at Davis-Monthan. The only problem for Scrooges who do decide to see this entertaining show, which runs another two weekends, is the lengthy--and sugary--musical prelude. The whole bouncy cast dons Santa hats and sings every corny Christmas pop song there is, shimmying among the cabaret-style tables in the house. But brace yourself: There's lots of vinegar to come. A Cool Yule! continues through Sunday, January 5, at Serendipity Playhouse, 7000 E. Tanque Verde Road, Suite 17 (across the street from Udall Park). Shows are at 7 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $11 for adults ($2 discount for seniors, active military and students with ID), $6 for children 12 and under. No babies in arms admitted. A $1 discount is offered to anybody bringing a can of food for the Community Food Bank. For more information call 751-4445.

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