A Playful Christmas
Boiler Room Theatre stages daffy alternative to standard holiday fare
by Martin Brady
A Dickens of a Christmas Carol
Presented by Boiler Room Theatre
Through Dec. 21 at The Factory in Franklin
On Dec. 12 at TPAC’s Polk Theater, Tennessee Repertory Theatre will open a brand-spanking-new production of A Christmas Carol, replete with an elaborate set, gorgeous period costumes, special lighting effects and an all-star cast of Nashville professionals. The Rep’s staging promises to be a notable addition to Music City’s various holiday-oriented goings-on. In the meantime, avid theatergoers are alerted to Boiler Room Theatre’s seasonal offering, a spoofy romp based on—but a far cry from—the Charles Dickens classic.
The Boiler Room folks don’t mind their comedy broad and silly, and like the company’s fall production of McBeth! The Musical, A Dickens of a Christmas Carol features a zany play-within-a-play setup and a good-natured willingness to take aim at great literature. In this staging, a traveling British theatrical troupe is doing A Christmas Carol, all right, only the leading lady is feeling under the weather. Nevertheless, the show must go on, and a young understudy, with script in hand, takes the stage in her stead. The tyro has her problems keeping up, but one gets the feeling that even with all talent on board, this production would be a disaster anyway. All that is to the benefit of Boiler Room’s audience, who are treated to rickety set pieces, repeatedly blown cues, hammy overacting, cheesy fake snow, costume mishaps, noisy backstage confusion, wrong entrances—in short, anything that might go wrong does. Then halfway through the show, the ailing prima donna forces her way into the theater and the subsequent remaining scenes, fighting for stage time with her fellow thespians.
Yes, it helps to know your Dickens, but that seems to include most of us. Even the vaguely initiated will laugh because the cast, in all its clumsiness and melodramatic ineptness, is on the same page. Mark Landon Smith’s fractured script moves efficiently through the Dickensian icons (Ebenezer Scrooge, the various ghosts, Tiny Tim, the traditional Christmas imagery), yet leaves the actors plenty of room to make merry under Laura Green’s swift, competent direction.
Lane Wright is the egotistical actor playing Scrooge. He’s bigger than life and perhaps is all the more humorous because he successfully plays things so straight. Around him are the more self-conscious players, who all must enact multiple roles and are funnier, of course, when they too take their tasks with utmost seriousness. The excellent Marc Mazzone is on board as Bob Cratchit et al., lending his gift for formal diction to the “veddy British” proceedings. Sondra Morton-Chaffin is also very good, displaying well her gifts for physical comedy. Contributing equal measures of welcome foolishness are Patricia Fagley, Douglas Goodman, Jane Stoub and Elizabeth Eakin. The intentionally amateurish—and hence quite appropriate—setting is by Corbin Green, and the well-wrought costumes are by Erin Parker.
In its lovably daffy way, this lighthearted take on Dickens makes for solidly alternative family holiday fare.
Boiler Room also recently announced its 2003 season, which opens Jan. 31 with the Frank Loesser classic Guys and Dolls. The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 opens on Mar. 21, followed by Chicago (May 9) and You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown (June 20). In a departure from its usual light comedies or musicals, the company will mount Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on Aug. 8, then follow that up with Smoky Mountain Mist on Oct. 3. The season concludes with a reprise of an audience favorite, The 1940s Radio Hour, opening Nov. 21.
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