The Know Theatre’s edginess is one of my favorite things about it. Seems like Jay Kalagayan and Jason Bruffy are always interested in finding the boundaries – continually fun to watch that process in our town, which has been known to get a bit too serious.
Christmas.To.Come – aka Christmas Carol with teeth, rock music and sex – pushes lots of buttons in a funny and light hearted way. Everything you know is in here, just twisted a bit.
The ancient triple goddess – maid, mother, crone – takes the place of the three ghosts. That crone was enormously powerful – she was definitely going to push through until Scrooge got the point.
The nephew is gay, which pushes one of Scrooge’s buttons. The scene where he and his gay lover are watching the lights come on around the city is one of the most powerful in the production.
Then there’s the fact that Tiny Tim is a picture of the 60’s Tiny Tim on a laptop. This play wants us to see everything from a different point of view.
The staging is continually intriguing, adding to the play with those clever ideas. Marley, for instance, is not dragging around chains, but a heavy old fashioned microphone and stand.
Only one fairly tiny non-working section – the Two Old Men from the Muppets acted as a sort of Greek chorus – except that their comments and jokes were seldom germane. They tended rather to jolt us out of our suspended disbelief into a ‘what was that?’ mode.
But you will love 98.76% of this play. Guaranteed.