I went to Ashland recently, just the weekend from the 9th to the11th of this month in fact. For those of you who have no idea what that is, Ashland is a small town in Oregon that has many theater groups in it. It however denies it's a theater town, but anyway. The point of this is I saw a play, and I'm going to review one of the two plays I saw. This is "It's Christmas, Carol!"
I should note that there's a hallmark movie of the same name, with a similar starting point but set in modern time. Also as you might have guessed from the title, I would've preferred to watch that one. This one is a Marx Brothers inspired version, with, as you might've guessed with Groucho there, them staring as characters, even if the original actors are long dead.
Anyway, this is also a musical. The musical parts....weren't that bad actually, even if most of them had nothing to do with the plot and sometimes the lyrics were hard or impossible to understand. The acting also was fine, with one exception, but we'll get there.
One last thing: This is an exception to my usual 'No spoilers whatsoever' rule, as I will be talking about the plot in depth. Why? Because unlike my other reviews here, this is not something you can buy easily, you would need to be in a specific location, at a specific time, to see this.
The play starts with a narrator talking about what The Christmas Carol story will be, if the major players were woman instead of men. Hey, that's not a bad idea. The titular Carol Scrooge is a noble woman who actually loves Christmas just fine. But she only does actions that benefit her some how or stroke her vanity. So her best friend in life, who got her hitched with a rich husband, comes back from the dead to warn her that her actions will earn her eternal damnation.
But that's about as far as it gets, because the first ghost to arrive is in fact Groucho Marx. And so the Marx brothers invade the play, with no regard to the story. Hey, that's not a bad idea.
Of course there's wit and humor around, and it's mostly very good, but unfortunately most of the jokes or gags are used too much or go on too long.
Anyway, Groucho completely derails the plot until he's given a time machine to go travel in time with. Hey, that's not a bad idea. And then there's dinosaurs for some reason. And later zombie future. Don't ask question, please, wait until the end of this.
After the first act, the plot literally stops mattering because the narrator, who is a character, says "Screw it!" and just goes along with the Marx brothers running amok. There is no plot after that, no follow through, and not even a thread of consistency.
But dear god are there puns, and bad puns are my jam. I loved every terrible pun. Seriously, I was practically raised on the Muppets and Monty Python. I can't get enough of them.
Anyway, this is also a musical, and most musical numbers aren't that bad, even if they're obvious parody's of Christmas songs. But the last one was just "What's it to ya" as a parody of "Hallelujah". And it made no sense and I couldn't understand the lyrics and was just confused over how the play didn't have an ending, but just stopped with no resolution whatsoever.
Now that I (badly) talked about the play, I will say there are four major problems in it. As I said before, one is reusing or going on too long with the same joke. Second is the lack of a plot or any consistency at all. Third is that while the acting was great, the actor playing Harpo had the stupidest expression on his face. I mean, I watched the Marx Brother films at age of Too Young to understand, so Harpo was my favorite character because of all the physical gags, but his expression was usually normal or varied, not constant one of "I just got a lobotomy."
The fourth and final major problem is that there are actually several ideas here that could work as a full play. Female main characters for Christmas Carol? Great! Time machine for time shenanigans in the Christmas carol? Awesome! The Marx brothers crashing a play? Brilliant! But combine these three together, and even more I didn't mention, and you just get a confusing mess.
So the too long, didn't read version is basically just...everything was good, but the script wasn't. I give this 2.5 stars out of 5. Why? Because I enjoyed it and don't regret seeing it, but I wouldn't see it again.
Anyway, see you all, next time.
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