A Fractured Chestnut of the Season, Roasted on an Open Spit
NOVEMBER 14—HUNTINGTON BEACH
First of all, how to put on a straight face the next time you meet Ebenezer, the Fezziwigs and the Cratchits is going to be a real problem after you’ve seen INSPECTING CAROL at Golden West College Performing Arts on their Mainstage in Huntington Beach.
And, while you’re at it, if you believe that Bob Cratchit's unfortunate young son Tiny Tim is really all that tiny, you may as well go back to your pretend-world now.
The chief target of this savvy lampoon is not just those boilerplate stagings of “A Christmas Carol” that take over almost all our theaters at this time of year, but the whole fabric of pious customs entrenched in American theatrical culture.
And if the first hour and three-quarters of this facetiously risible theatrical marriage of two classics, Gogol’s “The Inspector General” and Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” makes you smile, nothing can match the hilarious inventiveness and energy of its final 15 minutes of rip-roaring attack on the Dickens masterpiece. The show is set to run through November 17th.
The play roasts the behind-the-scenes stressors, endemic to every regional theater: budgets unbalanced, money unraised, subscribers unpacified and unretained. To top it off, the National Endowment for the Arts also does not go untargeted in this one. But, although much of the plot is a big reality check, it’s still all in good fun. INSPECTING CAROL is both a tribute to and a sendup of the catastrophes and the triumphs of nonprofit theatres everywhere.
Originally developed by Daniel Sullivan and the resident actors of Seattle Repertory Company back in the early 90’s, the action takes place at a threadbare Nebraskan theater company that is in danger of losing its last hold on fiscal solvency. Aware the NEA is sending a site visitor to evaluate their annual bread and butter production of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” the company mistakes Wayne Wellacre (William Logan), a monumentally naive “actor” with no experience but plenty of cocksureness (“I’ve gone about as far as I can go in data processing”), to be the NEA hatchet man in disguise. In a manic effort to save the theater, the company’s harried artistic director, Zorah Bloch (Carrie Vinikow) invites Wellacre to join the company, giving him preferential treatment (and then some).
What follows, of course, is complete pandemonium. The theater group becomes so obsessed with keeping Wayne happy that it even allows him to change the script in perfectly dreadful ways, turning a routine "Christmas Carol" production into a twist on the holiday perennial — or more accurately, a twisted version of it — something that maybe Michael Frayn and Rowan Atkinson might have created together. But amid those two hours of rapid-fire gags, some of them quite funny, the play ultimately serves as an extolment to a group of people who become a family — albeit a dysfunctional one.
Ms. Vinikow’s Zorah, artistic director of the theater (actually, it's broke) and the director of the misbegotten Dickens’ classic, has some rather unique pressures confronting her (Carrie Vinikow wrote the book on derisive delivery, the defiant come-on and the withering look). Her star is Larry Vauxhall (Lawrence Hemingway) as Scrooge, a rather pompous, highly opinionated and very left-wing actor who wants to rewrite the script to make it more politically correct, or imbue it with Marxist relevance. Mr. Hemingway's Larry not only throws in asides about the failure of government to meet the needs of the poor, but reads his lines in Spanish to show solidarity with starving migrant workers, giving us a take of the curmudgeonly Scrooge with a fine element of madness.
Another pressure for Zorah is Soapbox Playhouse itself, a previously monochromatic production company, who relies heavily on federal grants to stay alive. And Zorah has been under marching orders recently to apply a mandated cultural diversity in her starring roles. So, she hires good-natured Walter E. Parsons (Eric Davis), fresh from a stint in the armed forces, to play the three ghosts in the play — only he doesn't like the fact that his skeletal hand is white. Gravitating between arrogance, bewilderment, exasperation or just, myopic, Mr. Davis is deadpan hilarious at every turn. Unfortunately, our Mr. Parsons, as the ghost of Christmas Present (who never got his lines), freezes up (in a costume you’ll have to see to believe) and becomes speechless with Scrooge desperately trying to cover.
Meanwhile, Jack Clark is a most addled Phil Hewlitt (who believes he has a “thing” going on with Zorah), the ham actor playing Bob Cratchit, writhing and twisting with pain after hauling a jaunty, cavalier 11-year-old Tiny Tim around for over a decade on his shoulders. Bob Crachit is now unable to lift Tiny Tim, however, who, by then is subbed by Wayne (young Luther has found a better gig and is a no-show, and in response the grandiose Wellacre gives his best Richard III impression to audition for the role), and summarily drops him on the floor.
Director Amen has rounded up a superlative cast of farceurs to capture all the hilarity inherent in this backstage farce. Matt Koutroulis does a paramount job as Kevin, the harried business manager dealing with the company’s problematic cash flow and adds much to the frenetic fun.
And the tandem of Judy Gish and Scotty Keister are perfect as the English Dorothy Tree-Hapgood and her American husband Sidney Carlton, respectively, the company’s aged “classical” actors. Nicholas Elder as Bart FrancIs is also great in an assortment of Soapbox parts, such as a caroler, young Scrooge and Peter Cratchit.
Ms. Gish’s Dorothy drolly leads the company through its warm-ups and affects a hilariously inappropriate off-center southern accent as Mrs. Crachit so as to not be the only company member to perform “A Christmas Carol” with an English accent. Mr. Keister’s Sidney also provides one of the evenings most hilarious moments as the Ghost of Jacob Marley, when his clanking chains get caught on a stage light back stage and part of the set is pulled down — all wonderful pieces of slapstick. And when Betty Andrews, the actual NEA inspector finally arrives (the stunning Ms. Amanda MacDonald), she gets a free bucket bath when the curtain falls.
It’s really the onstage fulfillment of every real-life director's nightmare, essentially American theatre's answer to ''Noises Off.'' The richness of the play is enhanced by the fact that it deals with serious issues concerning government funding of the arts and the pressures affecting the programming and policies at regional theatres in such amusing and witty fashion.
And, even though Michelle Terrill in her delightful presence gives a peerless performance as the company’s beleaguered Stage Manager M.J. McMann, it is no slight to her or the rest of the excellent cast to give top billing to GWC’s Director Tom Amen and actual Stage Manager, Lydia McRae, with the assistance of some extraordinary work by set designer Tim Mueller and a terrific technical crew.
WITH: MICHELLE TERRILL; WILLIAM LOGAN; CARRIE VINIKOW; HARRISON TERRILL; SCOTT KEISTER; JUDY GISH; JACK CLARK; ERIC DAVIS; MATT KOUTROULIS; LAWRENCE HEMINGWAY; NICHOLAS ELDER; AMANDA MACDONALD.
GOLDEN WEST COLLEGE PERFORMING ARTS PRESENTS, INSPECTING CAROL By DANIEL SULLIVAN & THE SEATTLE REPERTORY CO., Directed By TOM AMEN; Scenic Design by TIM MUELLER; Lighting Design by MATT SCHLEICHER; Costume Design by AMANDA MARTIN; Sound Design by PAISHA BLEICH; Prop Design by CHAD PHILLIPS; Hair & Makeup by MICHON GRUBER; Stage Manager LYDIA MCRAE.
Now Playing Nov 8 - 17, 2024; With Performances Friday/Saturday at 7:30 PM and Sunday at 2:00 PM. Tickets Available at: www.gwctheater.com/
Chris Daniels
Arts & Entertainment Reviewer
The Show Report
Photo Credits: GWC Theatre Department
It was beautifully written, but I missed out on this theatrical performance.