Clickable Advent Calendar, 1 – Invasion: Christmas Carol
December 1, 2008 at 4:24 pm by Curt Holman in A&E
During the Christmases of my childhood, I always enjoyed advent calendars and the daily ritual of opening a little door to reveal a new surprise for each day of December until the 25th. Taking the advent calendar as inspiration, this month I’ll offer some tongue-in-cheek holiday blog entries, with the idea that clicking on, say, embedded video or “For the rest of this entry” lines are the online equivalent to opening a cardboard calendar window. First up is Invasion: Christmas Carol at Dad’s Garage, which is the only version of the Scrooge story where you may hear a word like “bacne.” Or “turduckephant.”
The Christmas Carol satire rejiggers the “invasion” concept the theater used in last year’s Invasion: Our Town. Both shows turn a theatrical classic upside down by the addition of a mid-show “invader” who’s not only new to the text, but hasn’t been seen by the rest of the cast, who have to incorporate the visitor on the fly. Dad’s likes to draft current or defunct roles from its long-running improvised soap opera Scandal! as the invader, and on Christmas Carol’s opening night Scott Warren played the Ghost of Christmas Past as a blustering barbarian in a loin clout. The nightly invader, isn’t the most surprising aspect of Invasion, however, but the casting of Ebenezer Scrooge himself. I’ll put the detail behind the cut to avoid spoilers, although the end of Dad’s trailer for the show gives it away:
Amber Nash cross-dresses as Scrooge and brings a fresh perspective on an overly familiar role. With her make-up, muttonchops and permanent scowl, she has something of a Dr. Zaius look about her. She gives Scrooge a delightfully bitchy energy, so it’s a shame that much of the show inevitably makes Scrooge passive and regretful.
Invasion: Christmas Carol features many built-in opportunities for improv games, and at times the actors deliberately mess with each other to funny effect. Nash, for instance, can control the duration of the ‘Christmas Present’ scenes we see, and can require frantic quick-changes from the actors playing multiple roles. The actors don’t know where Scrooge’s childhood scenes take place, and on opening night we discover that Scrooge worked with his first employer Fezziwig at Myrtle Beach.
Where Invasion: Our Town felt like a more structured parody of Thornton Wilder’s venerable text, Invasion: Christmas Carol is so loose and frivolous, at times it seems like the wheels will come off completely. Plus, even when the show features a funny invader, like Warren’s barbarian, the show’s still stuck with the role for the duration, even if he overstays his welcome. Fortunately the Scrooge story is so familiar and the actors nimble enough that the story survives, even through you’re less likely to hear “Bah, humbug!” than an epithet like “By the leathery nipple of Hera!”
Invasion: Christmas Carol. Through Dec. 23. Dad’s Garage Theatre, 280 Elizabeth St. Thu.-Sat., 8 p.m. $12-$22. 404-523-3141. www.dadsgarage.com
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