Meghan Murphy is Big Red. Her website says “If Lucille Ball, Bette Midler, Bonnie Raitt, Rita Hayworth and Etta James had a baby, her name would be Big Red. Now who doesn’t want to see THAT?!” I wanted to.

My friend Karen accompanied me to the Theater Wit to see Big Red and the Boys with the expectation that we would be the only two straight people in the audience. We weren’t. Maybe not even the two oldest. We’re usually either the oldest or the youngest in the crowd. It was, to say the least, an eclectic audience. I turned to Karen when I saw a family enter, one that included a preteen girl, and said “How can they bring a kid to this show?”

The show, Get Your Holiday On, was, as expected, rollicking, bawdy, good fun. Near the end of the show Meghan noticed the young girl in the audience, and, in a moment that seemed to be real, not part of the act, rhetorically said “There were children in the audience?”, before shrugging it off to the delight of the crowd, including the parents.

We both loved the show and may make it yet another holiday tradition (see comment on the Q Brothers), but what really impressed Karen was Meghan’s ability to navigate the show, with all its dance steps, while wearing three-and-a half-inch spiked heels. How is it that women can measure heels from a distance? It’s for insights like this that a partner in crime is invaluable on forays into unchartered territory.

So now we have tickets to see Meghan, along with Danni Smith and Cassie Slater in “We Three: Loud Her. Fast Her. Funny Her.” at Steppenwolf Theater of all places. The title is promising. Stay tuned.