When this theater company’s members proclaim the show must go on, they really mean it, even if they only have six hours to prepare and present Charles Dickens’s holiday classic.
In the comedy “A Christmas Chaos,” the Royal Shakespeare Theater is scheduled to present “A Christmas Carol: as a special one-off at a small theater, but Mother Nature has other ideas.
“It turns the Royal Shakespeare Company is stranded and they’re unable to do the show,” Director Julie Price said.
With the performance sold out, the staff of the little theater decides the go on with the show anyway.
“So with only six hours until the curtain, they put on their own version of ‘A Christmas Carol,'” Price said. “So everybody that does a little bit of amateur theater and all the tech stuff and the writers and the producers. Everybody has to pitch in to put on this show. As they’re doing that, everything gets chaotic as they’re doing the show.”
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Audiences can watch as the mayhem ensues when Elgin Theatre Company presents “A Christmas Chaos” Nov. 11-20 at Elgin Art Showcase in downtown Elgin.
Performances are at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays. Sunday performances will be sign acted for the deaf and hard of hearing.
While Elgin Theatre Company has produced holiday-themed classic radio shows the past few years, Price said she wanted to do a play this year. And she wanted it to be different than the typical holiday fare.
“I was looking for months this summer because I had a really hard time finding something because everything is either ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ or ‘A Christmas Carol.’ And those are so done and overdone and always done I just wanted to have something different,” she said.
“They’re uplifting and they have uplifting moments, but they’re generally sad. And at this time I just want people to laugh. I love hearing people laugh together as a group and hearing actors laugh and have a good time. There’s really nothing like it, the world being such as it is. We all need to laugh.”
Written by playwright Michael Wehrli, “A Christmas Chaos” is similar to “The Play That Goes Wrong,” which ended a Chicago run earlier this year.
“I love doing farces that make people laugh. This show has a very similar flavor to it,” Price said. “Literally everything goes wrong.”
To say more about the plot would be giving away much of the comedy, which involves physical as well as technical humor.
“All roles within a theater production are involved in the chaos,” she said.
Many of the 17 members of the cast have multiple roles.
“Even putting the program together it was very confusing about how to assign people what they did,” Price said. “They play themselves and then they also play characters within the play within the play. And they’re also playing a tech role. It’s a lot. It’s very chaotic.”
Even the way the play is staged of is difficult to describe.
“Let’s just say the setting is haphazard and thrown together,” Price said. “This group has only had six hours to prepare for this, so they’ve got to make due with what they’ve got.”
That goes for costumes as well.
“Some of them are unusual, shall we say,” she said.
Appropriate for all ages, the show is just under two hours of “good, fun, silly humor.”
“What I love about this show is that the actors are having a great time,” Price said. “Rehearsals are just a big stitch. We laugh so hard.”
The cast members are not afraid to jump in and put themselves out there, Price said.
“They’re doing stuff that they don’t normally do in a performance. A lot of it’s a little improvy. There’s a little bit of improv going on with it, so you don’t know what’s going to happen from moment to moment sometimes,” she said. “That’s what the actors are sometimes concerned about. They’re like, ‘I hope I can keep a straight face.'”
‘A Christmas Chaos’
When: Nov. 11-20
Where: Elgin Art Showcase, 164 Division St., 8th Floor, Elgin
Tickets: $20 adult; $18 students and seniors (65+)
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Information: 847-741-0532; elgin-theatre.org/
Kathy Cichon is a freelance reporter for the Courier-News.