FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
Inspecting Carol
written by Daniel Sullivan
directed by Bob White
Until December 20
Martha Cohen Theatre (TAC)
interview by Nikki SheppyWhile theatre companies across the nation trot out their Tiny Tim costumes and ghosts of Christmas past, Alberta Theatre Projects is busy preparing a different kind of Yuletide greeting - one that takes aim at the very industry that delivers it. Written by Daniel Sullivan and members of the Seattle Repertory Company, Inspecting Carol is a smart, farcical take on the business of bringing the Christmas classics to the stage - year after year after year....
The play is set in a small prairie city and follows a struggling theatre company in the four days leading up to their annual performance of A Christmas Carol. Out come the ratty costumes and the same old props. And in walks Tiny Tim, whose once diminutive size, so sweetly exploited in the play, has begun to suffer the effects of adolescence.
It's their 13th consecutive Christmas Carol and the company has been denied access to the hallowed coffers of the Canada Council. If this show is good, they'll win back their grant money. And so the artistic director, the new general manager, the stage director and all the actors band together to try to capture some sort of magic.
Actor Ken Kramer (recently seen as the tyrannical Roy Cohn in Angels in America) says the play isn't just an inside joke, but an accessible and good-humored tribute to the seasonal production.
"The play is poking fun at the theatre community and at companies who remount things," he says. "You know - the kind of habits they get into. It really takes a shot at funding agencies, actors' egos, directors' egos - that kind of thing.
"My character, Larry, is one of the founding members of the company and the actor who plays Scrooge. He's also an unrepentant social activist, so he keeps trying to make the play relevant and coming up with new ideas to make it A Christmas Carol for the '90s."
Like any politically correct production, the play-within-a-play features a new black actor who is part of the company's "multicultural initiative." Tensions escalate as the inspection date draws nearer. Love affairs and gaping financial holes surface. With only four days to go, and Larry still busy rewriting the script, time is running short.
According to Kramer, Inspecting Carol holds special appeal for people working in the arts - especially in theatre.
"l'm sure the people who are going to find it the funniest," he says, "are the guys over at Theatre Calgary who've actually done (A Christmas Carol) for five or six years, and come back into rehearsal with the same set and the same lines. They're the ones who are really going to get a kick out of it."
As for himself, the actor is happy to be doing comedic work again. The dark, high-brow wit of Angels in America, he says, is well countered here by some side-splitting guffaws.
"It's really nice to be in a comedy. But there's always that strange process you go through where you read the play for the first time and it's extremely funny, and by the second week of rehearsals you've forgotten exactly what you were laughing at."
Kramer admits the play-within-a-play format makes some unique demands on the cast.
"The challenge is to act badly well," he says, laughing. "There's a thin line between acting badly well and just acting badly. This (the play-within-a-play) is not supposed to be a world-class production. So you have to be able to get that across without looking like you're a bad actor yourself."
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