That year, his Mom wanted to skip the usual huge tree in the living room with vaulted ceilings and go for a small tree in the window of the sitting room. The family drove 50 miles and harvested their tree — one that should have gone under the vaulted ceiling. The solution: Cut the top off and pitch it. Set up the bushy bottom and finish it off with a giant, flashing, fiber optic angel. Sing Oh Christmas bush, oh Christmas bush, you are so ugly and laugh for years to come.
With that same sense of silliness in mind, Burk and his actors begin rehearsal for a show that combines Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol with Russian playwright Nicolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector, a play about paranoia and mistaken identities. 1. Enter Dorothy, the know-it-all, middle-aged voice coach. Enter, too, her husband Sidney, the too-old leading man who believes he’s still got it. They’ll be wearing matching running suits in the real production. It’s funny already. 2.
Enter the Christmas Carolers, belting out a holiday tune. Wait. Go back, Burk says as he steps on stage. Make it a little more Lawrence Welk-y. He gets blank stares. It’s an ancient reference. That’s OK. They’ll be swaying and sickly sweet soon enough. 3. Enter the 18-year-old playing a 12-year-old who’s really too big to still be playing Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol.
But as the only actor in the Soapbox Theatre company with an agent, he’ll soon be off to bigger and better gigs where Scrooge doesn’t lapse into Spanish. And the comedy will continue in Inspecting Carol as the Soapbox Theatre prepares for its annual production of A Christmas Carol and discovers the National Endowment for the Arts is withholding a 30,000 grant until an inspector submits a report.