Local theatre puts a twist on Christmas classic

Washington County Theatre (WCT) has been presenting “A Christmas Carol” on stage every two years for a while now, but this year the community theatre members decided to take a break from the serious tale.

Directed by Charity Main, WCT will perform “A Christmas Chaos” by Michael Wehrli on Friday, Dec. 14, at 7:30 p.m.; on Saturday, Dec. 15, at 2 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.; and on Sunday, Dec. 16, at 2 p.m. The show is sponsored by Meadow View Health and Rehabilitation Center.

“A Christmas Chaos” uses – some might say “abuses” – Charles Dickens’s heartwarming story of Ebenezer Scrooge’s metamorphosis as a springboard for comedy when the Royal Shakespeare Company fails to show up here in Salem for its promised performance of “A Christmas Carol.” Audiences are informed that the local actors and technicians have had seven hours to pull together their own production of the play, and, as you might imagine, “chaos” ensues.

From one minute to the next, anything that could go wrong does. Technicians wander around, seemingly unaware of the urgency of the situation, children are squabbling about who gets to play Tiny Tim, and all the actors have to play multiple parts, sometimes during the same scene.

“It’ll be fun for the audience to watch the actors try to struggle their way through it. We all think of ‘A Christmas Carol’ as more of a serious show, and this is so far from that,” said Main.

An emotional high point occurs during the “Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come” scene, when the actor portraying Scrooge (Mark Carter) indignantly realizes that a stage hand has misspelled his character’s name on the tombstone.

Rhiannon Diaz, who plays the stage manager in the production, explained, “Mark starts out as this snooty actor who thinks that he knows it all, that he’s the only one who can really act well, and he’s going to save the entire show. He has this attitude toward all the amateurs who don’t know what they’re doing. But in the end, he bonds with them, and he changes, and they become more cohesive as a group, and he starts to warm up to all of them and embrace them as a family. And that’s almost what Scrooge goes through.”

Also in the ensemble cast are Daniel Main, Lydia Casey, Tyra Lucas, Elle Strother, Remington Tarr, CJ Johnston, Jacob Dufour, Rachel Casey-Dufour, Isis Kaelin, Wesley Bledsoe, Nicole Colwell, Casey Miller, Hannah Ingram, and Harrison Nicholson.

Available at the door, tickets are $12 (adults) and $10 (seniors and students), and a BOGO deal is offered for the Saturday matinee (Dec. 15 at 2). WCT’s shows are performed at Gary W. Hartsook Hall, 402 N. Harrison Street, behind the Church of the Nazarene in Salem. For more information, call 812-620-6600.

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