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Photo Jim Dalglish
Braunwyn Jackett, as the unhappy Mrs. Bob Cratchit, finds unanticipated help from Andy Reynolds, who plays the ghost of various Christmases past, and an unexpected ally in the unrepentantly anti-holiday grousing of Bob Seaver, who plays Ebeneezer Scrooge.
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Holiday play turns Dickens’ classic on its comic ear
Like falling down the rabbit hole into Alice’s Wonderland, stepping into The Provincetown Theater to see Christopher Durang’s “Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge” means suspending any normal ideas you have of the traditional Christmas tales that are trotted out each year to be watched and wept over anew. Give up any preconceived notions about Tiny Tim, the Cratchit family, “Gift of the Magi,” “Oliver Twist” and even “It’s a Wonderful Life.” By the time the curtain goes down, all will have been skewed into a brand new comic froth.
This is very fun and a refreshing holiday treat for everyone. Even bored teenagers who were loath to turn off their Gameboys on review night were on the edge of their seats laughing before long.
Somehow Durang’s play is a morphing of the heart-string-twanging tale of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” and a Monty Python sendup of all things Christmas and smarmy. It’s irreverent, fast-paced, over the top, almost unfailingly funny and a pleasure to watch. (See show information below.)
The play begins traditionally enough with the young Ebeneezer Scrooge and Jacob Marley showing their true selves. (The play has a number of child actors and they are all great fun to watch.) The pulled-back and pleasant Marley (Kai Bois) is a solid foil to the nasty young Ebeneezer (Joseph Duarte).
The play looks as if it will follow the outline of “A Christmas Carol” but soon goes astray. For anyone who isn’t familiar with that story, Scrooge is a tightwad boss back in 19th century London who delights in pushing his downtrodden staff even further into the mud. Bob Cratchit is his long-suffering, big-hearted employee whose wife and children teeter on the edge of starvation and founder in a sea of destitution and may even soon face death. Three ghosts visit Scrooge on Christmas Eve to show him first his own past and why he became so mean, then the present circumstances of those around him, and finally what will happen to him and to the Cratchits in the future if something doesn’t change.
Durang jumps off that diving board and floats into a Christmas freefall that turns the Dickens’ story on its head and stirs in allusions to a stampede of holiday tales.
The four leads are well done with Bob Seaver snarling his way crankily through the Scrooge role, Braunwyn Jackett whining and complaining through the part of an unhappy Mrs. Bob Cratchit, Brian Fitzgerald as a perfect Mr. Bob Cratchit and Andy Reynolds in the over-the-top triple roles as the three ghosts. There are too many well-rendered characters to mention individually but Nikki Wing in twin roles as Tiny Tim and the dog along with Marjorie Conn in her roles as Little Nell and the pony are stage-filling.
What we get right away is that the ghost — who sometimes appears as a UPS delivery guy and other times in a pink suit and wig — is supposed to lead Scrooge to salvation but doesn’t quite have his skills down. He closes his eyes and summons up the past but doesn’t land where or when he expected, which leads to unexpected turns in the storyline. He also employs something like a stun gun to invisibly zap errant characters.
As we move forward, Mrs. Bob Cratchit can be found in the pub tossing back a few while her children languish in the root cellar instead of mending worn-out clothes or cobbling together a Christmas dinner from nothing. Her husband worries about her and what will happen to the family, and soon characters from other Christmas stories are popping up in the mix. The pitiful Cratchits limp toward Christmas literally and figuratively and the ghost keeps trying to find the right “lesson” stop in his time slide.
After the intermission we rejoin the Cratchits at their disastrous Christmas dinner and see glimmerings of hope that Scrooge may come around. But don’t hold your breath. That’s when the wheels come off for real and the story turns into a free-for-all that somehow manages to have a happy ending. Hey, it’s a Christmas story — it has to have a happy ending, though it’s not one you would expect.
Sets are minimal but fun and offer surreal nods to both Wonderland and Tim Burton. Musical director John Thomas delivers top notch piano work and even a haunting vocal. Director Tom Gladstone proves he can herd cats as he keeps this disparate group on track and on the laughs throughout a convoluted plot.
Go to be entertained and don’t expect high theater. You’ll get that and more.
artseditor@provincetownbanner.com
“Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge,” by Christopher Durang. Provincetown Theatre Company production shows at 8 pm Wed.-Sun., Nov. 30-Dec. 4, at the Provincetown Theatre, 238 Bradford St., Provincetown. Tickets are $20, $18 for PTC members, students & seniors. Call (508) 487-9793 or go online to ptowntix.com.
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In the Arts
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Dec 1st, 2005