Auntie Scrooge - A Backwards Christmas Carol

So, what do you do when you have been planning a production all year and then for reasons beyond your control cast members have to drop out and you are forced to postpone with less than your normal rehearsal time left? Well, CATS certainly had a clever solution, put on a radio play as a play! No script learning or move plotting required  –  brilliant! Directed by Julie Daniel, the play chosen was written by American playwright Anthony E Palermo and is a spoof comedy. Set in modern times, this tells the tale of Auntie Scrooge, a kindly, old great-great-great-great-grand-niece of the reformed Ebenezer Scrooge. Here we have all the usual ingredients for A Christmas Carol except in this case the ghosts are trying to ‘wring the niceness’ out of Auntie Scrouge.

To add to this, the whole thing was not performed in their usual village hall setting, but in the beautiful medieval church of St Leonards next door. A stage had been erected, by Paul Goodyer, Stephen Cawdell, Jim Daniel, Malcolm Allured and Mike Brazel at the midpoint of church with a curtain to the rear that allowed the actors to enter from the alter area behind it. To stage left rear was a bench upon which the actors could sit before coming forward to play their parts in front of the microphones. To stage right was a raised cubical that served as the Production cubical for the controller, Jim Daniel, with an illuminated sign that told us when we were ‘On Air.’. In the front of it was a small table at which sat the sound effect man, Bob Turner whose antics and goings on as he did one ridiculous sound effect after another are still making me chuckle now.  And in front of that was a long table at which the narrator sat and next to him were three members of cast, wearing Cow and Chicken masks, to make various farmyard noises at the appropriate places. We the audience were destined to be the studio audience for the radio show.

Lighting was by Paul Murphy, spotlights for which was rigged around the church very effectively and you soon transformed from church pew to radio studio.

The two main characters were the narrator, played by Nick Grantham and Auntie Scrooge played by Jayne Kaye. With the exception of the Cow-olers and Chickens, the rest of the cast played at least two parts each.

Nick Grantham kept us all amused with his reading and narration of the lines in a BBC type accent, which was really rather convincing and the expression on his face when the sound man failed to come in, or the script was torn from him and he was told from now on ‘we improvise.’ was priceless and proof they had actually learnt their lines rather than just reading the script.

Jayne Kaye was the strait bat as Auntie Scrooge with her niceness, which never faltered until the end when she eventually handed the Eggnog Ice Cream Company over to her greedy niece Frederika.

Steve Kaye was superb with two different accents as Bobby Cratchit and reggae star Bob Marley’s Ghost, well actually it was Bob Marley’s top fan representing him with a Geordie accent. Made me chuckle all the way through.

Pippa Ellison played Frederica and Big Tina. As Frederica she certainly came across as the greedy niece who couldn’t wait to get her hands on the business and shut down the eggnog production.

Rachel McCreath was The Ghost of Christmas Past Due as well as Gidget, the teenage son of Bob Cratchet. An amusing attempt to discredit Auntie’s past optimism. Liz Murphy played the Ghost of Christmas Presents. And the funniest one of all was The Ghost of Christmas 3.0 with Scott Millington as Tech Support, who also played Tiny Tim. The farm yard noises provided from the Narrators table were amusingly supplied by Vivien Reffin, Ken Payne and Dick Martin at suitably comic moments.

Culminating with the catchy Eggnog song, which the audience were encouraged to join in and join in they did!

Overall this was a fun evening’s entertainment, a very good fill in at short notice. Yes, it could probably have been a bit pacier and perhaps some more animation from some of the characters, but in the short time they had to put this together I think Director Julie Daniel and the cast and crew of CATS can pat themselves on the back for this one. and hopefully they will eventually be able to perform the show they first planned.

Thanks for the excellent hospitality and a “Moooo-ry” Christmas to you all too!

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