TribLIVE: For those who look forward to “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens’ seasonal tale of repentance, sharing and love, Christopher Durang’s “Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge” is nothing like the holiday classic.
“It does resemble the traditional story in structure, and many of the same characters appear — Scrooge, Marley’s Ghost, the Ghost of Christmas Past, Bob Cratchit,” says Karin Maresh, director of the production at Apple Hill Playhouse. “But, just like the old ‘Fractured Fairytales’ on the old ‘Rocky and Bullwinkle’ show, nothing in this show plays out as we expect it to.”
6 comments:
This is a facsinating concept. While a wide range of Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol have been performed from a wide range of views and styles, this concept is unique to my ears. I have always loved the story of A Christmas Carol and have loved almost every retelling of it i almost any style (I still contest and A Muppets Christmas Carol is the best version ever). However, while I am not opposed to the idea, I wonder how entertaining the story is from other people's perspectives. A Christmas Carol is mainly about the internal changes made by a character from a magical excursion that does not directly involve characters in his living world. While Scrooge senses that he is interacting with people on Christmas Eve, in reality, he is not. So this leads me to my major question: what do the story tellers base their interpretations of Mrs. Cratchit on? In the story, Mrs. Cratchit admits to only meeting Scrooge only a few times and loathed him for his treatment of her husband. And is described as a sweet and caring women who has nothing but love and respect for her husband and children. I would love to see this production and see how they incorporate these aspects into the story.
The play sounds quite strange. I have worked on and read a few of Durang's play and they are all quite unusual. So it is quite intriguing to take an character that is very little known and very minimal role in the original story. Sounds honestly like Durang just took the stock character from the original play and used their names, possibly some characteristics, to do what ever he wanted with them. I am glad it is not being produced for a Christmas show, because I do not feel like that would go over well in most theatres. I would be intrigued to see what Durang is doing with this production and how he plans on using it.
I love "The Christmas Carol," personally my favorite version is the one "performed" by the Flintstones that i saw many times as a younger kid.
This version sounds rather interesting, however I do wonder about the overall reaction to this play being that it is such a completely different take on a widely loved story. It really has to potential to go either way. Either people will come see it simply because they loved the original and they will enjoy the new spin on things or people may purposefully avoid the show, or dislike it after watching, because they loved the original so much and sometimes you just shouldn't mess with a good thing. Personally I think i would enjoy seeing the different view points in the show, but im interested to see some reviews from audience members.
This sounds so funny! Possibly great, but also possibly unnerving. The idea of a Christmas parody/ comedy is a fairly unique idea, as most stories are about feel-good moments and family times together throughout the holidays. Thus the juxtaposition between the traditional Christmas time and this new story is a very interesting one. Many people have made different versions of "A Christmas Carol", but this one certainly seems to stray from Dickens' text the most. I'd be very interested to see how the show, as Dickens' classic is one of my favorite stories and this seems to turn all of that upside down and reinvent the characters. A very interesting take on a classic, which I'm sure will give fascinating new perspectives to the core message of the story.
This sounds awesome. I grew up with "A christmas Carol". Its so nice to see a different take on it compared to all of the different takes of the story. I would love to see it. Its always hard for me to watch the different versions, because i pick out and hold on to all the different acting and design choices and the little plot differences in each one. It would be interesting to see what elements are defined in the musical.
This sounds very amusing and fun! In Dickens' original story, I found Mrs. Cratchit very boring, with her perfect, sympathetic adoration for family. It seemed very unrealistic. Real families fight and argue. I'm not saying that this version shows how families really behave, but it is interesting to see that it is just as unrealistic as the original story, but in the opposite way. With Mrs. Cratchit portrayed as the unloving, drinking woman, we see an amusing exaggeration of family life. When the article talked about the love story between Mrs. Cratchit and Scrooge, all I could think of was Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney Todd for some reason. I'm not sure if that relationship is needed in the play, but I would love to see this production. It's fun to see a change in the ever so popular Christmas Carol.
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