1. The Christmas Show
The Christmas Show
Christopher Gambino
Curated by Jesse Bandler Firestone
Below Grand, Nov 15 – Dec 20, 2025
Someday, maybe
All my dreams will be repaid
Hell, I'd even play the maid
To be in a show
– “Broadway Baby” lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
The Christmas Show by artist, playwright, and grand delusionary—or is it visionary?—Christopher Gambino is a crime scene, a holiday altar, and a cursed theatre starring sculptures-cum-bodies engaging in the unending encore of a new play. This new play, also called The Christmas Show, is written by Christopher Gambino, the artist, and features Christopher, the Star, performing her new holiday showcase, The Christmas Show.
In a daisychain of fever dreams, innuendos, egos, and alter-egos, the exhibition is this play’s wreckage, staged by Gambino and building upon (stealing from) Jean Genet’s The Maids, a psychosexual drama of sweet reprise. Without its ending, without his roses, without his stage, Gambino finds his footing, his eternal refrain and refuge in this mythic origin story, staged in fragments, told in shambles, and performed by the very detritus that outlives him. So come see the show; it might be his last.
For this act, Gambino slays and revives Christmas reverie: a holiday beloved and beguiled, covetous and indulgent, homicidal and, most of all, festive. The storefront window, now a signature of Below Grand’s programming, becomes a forsaken, gnarled display, containing the broken and used set pieces and accompanying props from an upcoming performance that has already happened—and will debut soon, eventually.
Stay tuned. Look fast. Clap hard. Because Christopher dies at the end.
The Christmas Show also stars a maid, the Imposter, who works in the theatre in which Christopher performs this new theatrical work. On stage, and behind the scenes, glamour, class, torment, and megalomania collide. The maid, impersonating Christopher, performs her own version of the show backstage, then murders Christopher, replacing her for the finale.
The Christmas Show also stars a maid, the Imposter, who works in the theatre in which Christopher performs this new theatrical work. On stage, and behind the scenes, glamour, class, torment, and megalomania collide. The maid, impersonating Christopher, performs her own version of the show backstage, then murders Christopher, replacing her for the finale.
At Below Grand, you’ll see the scene of the crime: The dressing room’s chair split in two, avatars of the maid and Christopher. Around them, carnage. A velvet frame, exploded bouquets, a shredded uniform, a mirror shattered into gossip, and a boudoir drunk on its own collapse.
Window displays are always theatre, always mausoleums—perfumes and blouses rehearsing for the lives they will never live. Gambino seizes this form, twists it, and casts himself as the eternal understudy in his own spectacular demise: the life of an artist, the life of a star. These sculptures are not just props but players, not objects but mirrors.
This year, everyone gets coal, but bring Christopher his flowers. Please.