Mrs Bob Cratchit's Wild Christmas Binge: What's A Ghost To Do?
2008-12-23
NEW MlLFORD — One of the more forgettable icons of the 1960s was a diminutive, long haired, extremely ugly television personality who called himself Tiny Tim (after the Dickensian character). He accompanied himself on the ukulele while singing "Tiptoe Through The Tulips" in a quavering falsetto.
As played by veteran performer Viv Berger, it is this version of Tiny Tun (sans ukulele) who dominates the Cratchit household in Mrs Bob Cratchit's Wild Christinas Binge, waving his crutch and chanting "God bless us, everyone" until someone accuses him of have Tourette's syndrome.
If you like this kind of send-up of the traditional Christmas saccharine, you will definitely enjoy TheatreWorks New Milford's production of the Christopher Durang takeoff on Dickens' Christmas Carol being presented until the end of the month.
Durang, who is known for such bitingly funny works as Beyond Therapy and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All, is neither gentle nor sentimental. In this case, he takes the premise of Ebenezer Scrooge being reformed under the guidance of the three Christmas ghosts, to the point where he is moved to pity the brave little crippled son of his brow-beaten clerk, and turns it on its head.
All the ghosts have been replaced by a single Madonna-like figure who roams far enough off the storyline to tangle with such modern figures as Leona Helmsley and George Bailey (the hero of It's a Wonderful Life).
Whereas the long-suffering Bob Cratchit remains as cheerful, patient and humble as Uncle Tom, his wife is having none of it. While Bob and the' children make do with empty boxes for presents, and an empty larder for Christmas dinner, she is off getting drunk in the pub. When she returns, she says really mean things to her children, whose numbers have swelled to include silly "Little Nell" (who seems to have wandered in from another Dickens novel, The Old Curiosity Shop).
The only person Mrs Cratchit seems to actually like is Scrooge himself, and the attraction is mutual. They j'eer at the children, they snipe 'at the ghost, and they go out drinking. What's a ghost to do? What's a starving family to do?
Durang comes up with a solution, which again, you may like. The audience certainly seemed to. We were there for a full house whose continuous enthusiasm sounded like a relentless sitcom laugh track.
Along with Berger, Regan Flynn is ditzily air-headed as the tri-partite ghost, John Taylor is lecherous and interested as Scrooge, Susan Abrams is a veritable Queen of Mean in the title role, Glenn R. Couture is properly fatuous as Mr Cratchit, and M.J. Hartell is pathetically sad as Little Nell.
If your adolescents are feeling snarky about having to read the classics take them up to New Milford and introduce them to broad-satire.