One great thing about a really great story is the way it can withstand reboots, variations and new versions. Nothing intrigues Shakespeare lovers more than a “Romeo and Juliet” that’s been transported from Renaissance Italy to, say, the California/Mexico border (as the Oregon Shakespeare Festival did a few years ago); nothing thrills “Star Trek” fans more than sexy young Kirk and Spock, warping across cineplex screens in the recast, freshened-up franchise.
One of Western literature’s greatest stories is “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens’ perfect cautionary tale about a mean miser who changes into a cuddly teddy bear after glimpsing ghostly visions of his own unloved end. It’s such a great story that nobody can seem to keep their hands off it; in addition to annual airings of dead-earnest stage and film versions, a whole separate stream of updated, expanded, satirical and meta-variations has arisen — from reverent approaches like the films “Scrooged” and “The Man Who Invented Christmas, to totally mischievous parodies like the radio play “Soylent Scrooge” and a horror novel called “I Am Scrooge: A Zombie Story for Christmas.”
And then there’s “The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society Production of A Christmas Carol,” a glimpse at behind-the-scenes pandemonium during an amateur staging of “A Christmas Carol.” It opens tonight at Woodland’s Love Street Playhouse.
The thespians of Farndale Avenue do their best with Scrooge and Dickens, but their truly limited theatrical talent and their truly sharp verbal barbs add up to whole lot of comedic chaos. “When and if they can remember their lines” things go just fine, according to Love Street, but in this rendition, missed lines are only stepping stones on the way to inappropriately monumental showbiz egos. So are games of charades, a malfunctioning P.A. system and some misplaced characters who don’t seem to belong in the world of “A Christmas Carol” at all. The bickering that ensues is only a precursor to bigger disasters — some of which are literally earthshaking. If you go, stand back!
