Review: Off-Central’s collision of Shakespeare and everything Christmas is a teetering high wire act

The local community theater is teetering on the edge of financial abyss and looking for their annual Christmas Shakespeare to save the day. With less than half an hour to curtain, the two married couples ready to go on learn the horrific news that the rest of their cast is at St. Pete Hospital with projectile vomiting and violent diarrhea. The expectant audience is at the door so the “show must go on.” But what can four amateur thespians possibly do?

As it turns out, after a long exposition, they improvise a mashup of Dickens meets the Bard, using stock costumes with lots of sequins and ruffles and a box of Shakespearean props. But riffing on Yorick’s skull, four bloody daggers, eight vials of poison, and ultimately 12 severed heads, The Twelve Days of Christmas takes on the tone of the Bataan Death March—but the ludicrous juxtaposition has those of us in the real audience gulping for air between laughs.

That the actors often chew the scenery, which is totally in keeping with the desperation of the moment, produces action that is very broad; it’s never subtle, but it is funny. Much of the text is reminiscent of “Saturday Night Live” sketch comedy. Under Ward Smith’s smart direction the quartet of performers is totally committed, and each has an opportunity to shine. And the simple set design enables the cast to move fluidly from onstage to off with the flick of a curtain and a change of light.

Victor (Troy Brooks) is an officious English professor “teaching illiterate freshmen” married to cheery kindergarten teacher, Renee (Tracey Reynolds). They serve as co-Artistic Directors for the group. The co-Exec Directors are the bickering couple Sylvia (Melissa Misener) and Bob (David Warner). As the tension mounts, Bob urges Sylvia to focus on a happy thought. “I probably don’t have a brain tumor,” she quips.

Sylvia’s an intellectual property attorney who luckily knows the laws concerning fair use parody of copyrighted material. After they reject both “Othello the Snowman”and Bob’s passive-aggressive poke at Victor, “Othello Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” Renee suggests a feeble “Quoth the Reindeer ‘Nevermore.’” Luckily, Sylvia also conveniently remembers both Clement Moore’s famous poem “A Visit from St. Nick” and the jealousy-driven plot of Othello. As she improvises this new poetry mashup, she orders that the rest stay silent. Brooks milks his mimed moments in the spotlight as the Moor of Venice, Warner uses Bob’s Iago to physically express disdain toward Victor, and the extended pantomime gives Reynolds a chance to define Desdemona as a hip-undulating floozy.

As the quartet pushes forward, Bob the plumber as Scrooge wanders into the “Romeo and Juliet” balcony scene and manages to goose Juliet up on a ladder while discussing his hopes for the roasted bird on the Cratchit family Christmas table. Tensions ensue. Later Warner sports a ridiculous blond wig while improvising Christmas variations on Hamlet’s most famous “silliquy” (the missing syllable another point of contention). He warns of the “thousand natural shocks of bait-n-switch advertising” and considers the possibility of “suicide by fruitcake.”

“I saw Mommy Shooting Santa Claus in the Face” gets no traction, but “Frosty, the Snowman” becomes “Hamlet, the Danish Prince,” and The Tempest gets a shout out in a “Prospero is Coming to Town” pat-a-cake.”

Misener, an award-winning director and opera diva, pulls off a serious coup as Cleopatra singing “All I Want for Christmas is a Deadly Asp,” while somehow managing to sound like a singing lawyer rather than an opera star. This is no simple feat as it’s usually impossible for classically trained singers to suppress their hard-earned skills. Cleo sits on Santa like a lap dance and they “jingle all the way.”

The contrasting Lucy Bishop is memorable in the small role as the ancient, emotionless Stage Manager who came with the building. She interjects indecipherable grumbling and an inflexible attitude. But she’s a techno geek and the only one capable of running the computerized sound and lights.

Renee appears as a ludicrous Shylock, spoofing the 1953 novelty song about a little girl fixed on a hippopotamus, and instead proclaims “I need to get a pound of flesh for Christmas.” Even in the context here, this one is a corker.

Victor gets to put his personal mark on Shakespeare’s villains. First, as the hunchbacked King Richard III who whines that “I’m Getting Nothing for Christmas,” then in a Ron DeSantis-defying wig as Lady Macbeth, who coos “Santa baby, slip a dagger under the tree” and be sure to include plenty of hand sanitizer. It’s clear that Mr. Brooks is in his element.

As is fitting the situation, the show is always teetering like a high wire act. Director Smith and his capable company capture the ongoing “deer in the headlights” feeling. There’s an extended bit about Julius Caesar, but Tiny Tim reminds us that Christmas is “not a day to assassinate people.” The characters eventually “improvise” their way toward the sing-a-long denouement when we as the real crowd morph into the play’s audience and get to see if we have the goods. If the world’s news has got you down, a sure cure is this collision between Shakespeare and everything Christmas.

Subscribe to Creative Loafing newsletters.

Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed