A Drunk Christmas Carol

A Drunk Christmas Carol puts Dickens's ghost story in the hands of a cast in which one performer has been drinking and the others have to keep the evening on the rails. The text is the familiar one. The delivery is improvised around it, and the gap between the two is where the show lives.

Scrooge is still a miser, the three spirits still arrive, and the Cratchits still need a goose. What changes is everything around the script: interruptions, asides, sudden detours and a running argument between the sober actors and the one who is not. Audience members are drawn in and occasionally handed something to do. The story still arrives where Dickens left it.

The tone is raucous and unsentimental, closer to a late-night comedy room than a period drama, and the laughs come from watching trained performers cope with a collapsing evening rather than from mocking the source. It rewards anyone who knows the story well, because most of the jokes depend on knowing what is supposed to happen next.