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A CHRISTMAS CAROL	TOWERING INFERNO
HAMLET	NEAR LIFE
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"CALL IT 'CIRQUE DU SCROOGE' - IN LONG BEACH, A CIRCUS-LIKE ' CHRISTMAS CAROL' PLAYS FAST AND LOOSE WITH DICKENS WHILE STAYING FAITHFUL TO THE ESSENCE OF THE TALE.

Like mainline churches, mid-sized theater companies may look hopefully to the holiday season as the time many folks make an obligatory appearance, drop money in the plate and go home with a membership pitch tucked in their program.

The tastes of such Christmas-only theatergoers, though, can be as ritualized as churchgoers': Many of them have tykes in tow, and they're not looking for the raunchy laughs of such local small-theater faves as 'Judy's Scary Little Christmas' or 'Bob's Holiday Office Party.'

In short, they want their Dickens. After resisting for all of its 18 years, International City Theatre has jumped on the 'Christmas Carol' bandwagon. Literally. It's a traveling circus troupe that tells the Scrooge story faithfully but playfully, in director caryn desai's brisk, smiling rendition.

We're talking juggling, puppetry, stilt walking, tumbling, mime - catnip for the kiddies, sure, but pretty wonder-working for the rest of us too. Desai has overlaid this carny element onto Doris Baizley's 1977 adaptation, in which we meet the ragtag traveling players pre-show and find them short of a few essentials: Marley's chain, a Tiny Tim and - oops - their Scrooge. When the part falls to the troupe's cranky stage manager (EZRA BUZZINGTON), he offers feeble protests, then throws himself into the part with hammy glee.

And we're off, in a telling distinguished by the cast's convincing festivity - particularly in choreographer C. Xavier Drayton's jiggy dances - and by beguiling stage wizardry. Don Llewellyn's platform set is both circus ring and large clock, with Debra Garcia Lockwood's lighting turning the hands. Costumes by Nadine D. Parkos and Gelareh Khalloun are a motley mix of Victoriana and harlequin, abetted by Barbara Matthews' make-up and hair. Sean T. Cawelti's puppets are evocatively ungainly: A lumbering, two-headed Ghost of Christmas Present looks like a mutant Muppet jack-in-the-box, and a haunting Ghost of Christmas Future suggests a horse's head with a coal oven for a mouth.

BUZZINGTON makes a delightful Scrooge - emphasis on the 'light' - and as a whole, the cast, though assembled for this production, plays like an ensemble that has been working together for ages. Jeffrey Anderson-Gunter makes a sharp ringmaster/barker and a mean Marley, though his most deliciously deadpan turn is as the bell-jingling door to Scrooge's office.

The cast is ideal, both for the circus troupe and for 'Carol': The bouncy fat man (E.E. Bell), the fluttering ingenue (Erin Bennett) and her zaftig diva stage mom (Lee Anne Moore), the lean hero (Douglas R. Clayton), the dulcet-voiced leading lady (Sarah Underwood) and a trio of impossibly versatile clowns: Yuri Lowenthal, Matt Gould and the brilliant Madeleine Falk.

All told, this is no drearily dutiful 'Carol' but a broadly drawn big-top tall tale as humbug-proof as Christmas confections come.

" Just when you thought it was safe to venture out into the oh-so-familiar dramatic terrain of Ebenezer Scrooge, it turns out you were right. At least that's the case with ICT's joyously imaginative take on the well-worn holiday-season staple. It's a big-top version of the Dickens classic, complete with jugglers, acrobats, puppeteers, stilt walkers, musicians, bicyclists, rope jumpers and vaudevillian shtick. The concept - a troupe of carnival clowns staging the show - is similar to that used by Michael Ritchie in his film adaptation of The Fantasticks, but here it becomes an integral thread, resulting in a spry 75-minute lark that seems to fly by in half the time.

Doris Baizley's script, developed in the Mark Taper Forum Writer's Workshop, maintains the essence of the original tale while opening the door for directors and actors to transform it into something fresh and magical. When actors for the play-within-the-play are reported missing, the director of the traveling troupe (EZRA BUZZINGTON) is forced to play the lead role of Scrooge, frolicking his way through a marvelously eccentric portrayal - the daffiest since Mr. Magoo's. Meanwhile, in true Ruby Keeler style, the eager prop boy (Patrick Allen Dorn) gets his big chance as an ebullient Tiny Tim. The nine other ensemble members play a huge variety of roles and even serve as props, such as doors and tables, in a whimsical nod to the castle full of animate objects in Beauty and the Beast. Caryn Desai's brisk and clever staging keeps the action moving seamlessly.

The amazingly versatile actors go through their paces with dexterity and grace, creating a dazzling array of visual and aural effects. Supporting their efforts are choreographer C. Xavier Drayton and music director Darryl Archibald. The colorful circus-arena set by Don Llewellyn, resplendent costumes by Nadine D. Parkos and Gelareh Khalloun, and remarkable lighting effects by Debra Garcia Lockwood create the perfect ambience for he tireless high jinks. Sean T. Cawelti's enormous puppets, filling the roles of the three ghosts, nearly steal the show. The rag-doll Christmas Past and two-headed Christmas Present seem inspired by Tim Burton's' The Nightmare Before Christmas, and the ghastly Christmas Future looks like a monster from outer space.

Parents should be forewarned that this production pulls no punches in the darker aspects of the story, resulting in some scary moments. But it all ends on a gleeful note, of course, as all viewers - whether young or young-at -heart - get caught up in the rousing and heartwarming final scenes. This exuberant adaptation seems certain to delight audiences for years to come."

"Just when the mere idea of seeing one more performance of 'A Christmas Carol' could push you over the edge, along comes something completely different: International City Theatre's inimitable spin on Doris Baizley's adaptation of Charles Dickens' holiday classic.

Not only will ICT's commedia del arte version charm all the children who come to see it, it will warm the hearts of everyone in your family - even those bah, humbug curmudgeons.

Picture this. A raucous troupe of traveling performers - white-faced clowns, energetic mimes, giant puppets, street musicians, circus dancers, jugglers, acrobats and stilt-walkers - has come to town to put on the show. But the stubborn, sourpuss stage manager wants to call everything quits because some props are missing. 'Who needs props?' asks the optimistic prop boy. 'Aren't we professionals?'

On that cue, everything shifts into high gear, as the 11-member cast races at top speed to play every part in the legendary story of Ebenezer Scrooge. (And that includes the furniture.)

Think three-ring circus. Think Punch and Judy. Think Frederico Fellini and controlled madness. It takes split-second timing, consummate skill and total collaboration of a tightknit ensemble to pull this type of show off. Let's simply say that under the top-notch vision of director caryn desai, ICT's 'A Christmas Carol' is sheer delight from beginning to end.

Let's also hear it for musical director Darryl Archibald and choreographer C. Xavier Drayton, who do themselves proud. As for stage manager Michael Laun, he must be knocked out by all the whirlwind activity in this demanding production.

It's hard to give credit where credit is due when everyone plays two or three parts. Starting with Jeffrey Anderson-Gunter (who is dynamite as the Director, Marley and the Ghost of Christmas Future), there are many outstanding performances.

EZRA BUZZINGTON turns in sensational portrayals as both the Stage Manager and Scrooge; Patrick Allen Dorn is adorable as Tiny Tim; Douglas Clayton is heartfelt and Tiny Tim's father, Bob Cratchit; and Sarah Underwood is charming as Tiny Tim's mother and Christmas Past.

In fact, each multitalented performer contributes so much to this production that the total effect would be diminished without them. Rounding out the rest of the cast are E.E. Bell as an Old Blown and Mr. Fezziwig, Lee Anne Moore as Mrs. Fezziwig, Mark Gould as Scrooge's nephew Fred, and Erin Bennett as his wife and Belle (Scrooge's long lost love).

As for Madeleine Falk and Yuri Lowenthal, aside from playing Christmas Present, is there anything in the circus that these two cannot do?"

"A circus troupe finds itself short two characters so the stage manager and prop boy fill in. No big deal, right? The show must go on.

My, does the show go on. The two substitutes ably acquit themselves in the roles of...Ebenezer Scrooge and Tiny Tim?

They do in caryn desai's innovative and wildly entertaining direction of Doris Baizley's adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic 'A Christmas Carol' at the International City Theatre.

The characters you've grown up with are there: Scrooge, Marley (that's Jacob, not Bob, for the Gen-Xers), and the Cratchits.

The story is as captivating as it was when Dickens wrote it 160 years ago. Scrooge, eschewing the season's graces of faith, hope and charity, recants with contrition his Republican virtues of arrogance, penury and pomposity after three nighttime visits from the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future.

He shows, to the disbelief of his family and acquaintances, that an old dog can indeed learn new tricks.

Speaking of tricks, what keeps this production from ho-hum-ness and bah humbug-osity? For starters, try the ghosts. One looks like a potato doll version of the good witch, Glenda, from the Wizard of Oz, and the other two resemble Sesame Street characters: a two-headed Bert and Ernie and a Mr. Snuffleupagous.

Clever touches abound. Humans played the doors: creaking, swiveling, and locking. It's not as easy as it looks. Scrooge's bed solved the problem of presenting the dreaming Scrooge to the audience: make the bed vertical, have it double as another piece of furniture. a woman on stilts represented the purity of falling snow.

But the tinsel on the evening was desai's staging of Baizley's adaptation. Having a circus troupe stage a venerable holiday favorite threw the production into the realm of surrealism and vaudeville. Thus you have the hilarious scene in which the Stage Manager/Scrooge faces Marley's' Ghost and says in sotto voice (sic) 'We lost the chain, we lost the chain' in response tot he Ghost's reference to the chains of time.

If you can imagine Tony Randall's finicky Felix Unger character from The Odd Couple, you can imagine EZRA BUZZINGTON in the role of Scrooge. He stunned the audience as he skirted across the stage with grace, Stage Manager at one moment - concerned that something was wrong with the set - and in another moment Scrooge - concerned that he was flubbing his last-second role.

Patrick Allen Dorn's Prop Boy/Tiny Tim enchanted us. And mention must be made of each and every member of the cast who juggled, danced, sang, cavorted and made merry throughout the evening - frothy, sweet and stimulating."

"Thought to have been transcribed from memory by the actors who performed it, this version of Shakespeare's tragedy was published 20 years before the more familiar 1623 Folio edition and offers several interesting variations. It's shorter - running a mere two hours in this case - and it revamps several key scenes, some characters' names or name spellings are different and it contains less ornate text (i.e. "To be, or not to be, ay, there's the point. To die, to sleep, is that all?). The essentials, however, remain the same, and director Andrew Borba's sturdy, classical staging comes with eye-catching tableaux, opulent costumes and a pleasing ensemble. And while some of Borba's choices (i.e. a female Hamlet, a WW1-era time frame) do little to advance a particular concept, neither do they dull the impact of the revered saga. Alina Phelan is a serviceable Hamlet, though more proficient at melancholy than madness, and Kathryn Stockwood put a refreshingly robust spin on Ofelia. EZRA BUZZINGTON is a treat as the persnickety Corambis (Polonius in the Folio), while Carolyn Hennesy's Gertred is a convincingly concerned mother to her troubled son."

"A friend of mine loves to tell the story of her high school Macbeth, in which the lead actor dropped a word from the phrase "tomorrow/Creeps in its petty pace," then quickly recovered, so that the line came out, "tomorrow/Creeps in its pace...pettily." This kind of actor's save, honoring grammar but mangling meaning, helps both explain and describe the impure pleasures of Hamlet: The First Quarto, now in a ripping good production at Theatre of NOTE. If I had to write a blurb for the ad, I'd say: less great, more fun than the folio. Or; Never has a bad quarto looked so good.

NOTE's own postcard blurb isn't bad, though: "To be or not to be/Ay, there's the point." That's not a typo, ladies and gentlemen - nor is the first quarto's replacement of "What a rogue and peasant slave am I' with the eloquent "What a dunghill idiot slave am I" (you can't make this stuff up). And speaking of the "to be or not to be" soliloquy, it's worth the price of admission just to watch the expressive, imaginative, totally committed Alina Phelan struggle to make sense of the quarto's unlyrical, fragmented version, which lurches bafflingly between hope and fear for the afterlife, and which contains such gems as the childlike, "To die, to sleep, is that all?" and the perfunctory, "No, to sleep, to dream - ay, marry, there it goes." Phelan plays the speech's confusion, and everything else in this fast-paced Bard bootleg, honestly. What she's speaking is, according to scholars, probably the embroidery of an unreliable memory, as this unauthorized early printing of the play is through to have been reconstructed by a spear carrier from the original production (the clue: all of the scenes with Marcellus are intact, the rest are a cut-up job). But what my Riverside edition ominously calls "memorial contamination" comes off, under director Andrew Borba (an old hand from Oregon Shakes), as a sort of found-art "outsider" Shakespeare, as richly revealing as any post-modern deconstruction but unselfconsciously showmanlike in its economy. And when it's played this well- let's just say that there are no flights of angels here but a very sweet prince indeed.

"Habit makes dull rust of the most wondrous things. One of Shakespeare's greatest plays has been done, undone, and overdone so many times that most of us feel we know it, that there's nothing new to learn. When the play was new, there were probably so many versions of it in existence that no one knew which was the original. The earliest published version of Hamlet is The First Quarto. It's credited to William Shakespeare, and dated 1603, 20 years prior to the publishing of the First Folio, that scholars are no nearer to deciding its origins than were the avid readers of manuscripts that had just been produced on the stage. It may be that, like novelizations of screenplays that appear on the bookshelves at almost the same time as the film appears in theatres, the relationships of the quartos to the play were minimal. The first quarto may have been a bootleg version of Hamlet, rushed into quick print to make a fast ducat for an entrepreneurial actor manager, or even a cribbed copy of the play duly recorded and then printed out by an assiduous audience member who was investing in Shakespearean futures.

Theatre of NOTE's production is only the 11th production of The First Quarto, only the third fully staged American production. Although the major plot points of the Hamlet we all know and love are still in evidence, the language is not quite what we have come to expect. those in the habit of quoting along with the actor when he speaks the speech (I remember chorusing along with a young Richard Burton when I was in drama school in London) or begs the question of to be or not to be (here it's, "To be or not to be, ay, there's the point...") may be dismayed to find that the familiar words are no longer there. As a result, the attention is focused on the action. Here the full plot structure of the play remains; Hamlet gets his druthers, so do the Queen, her husband, Ophelia, Polonius, and everyone else who happens to be in the way. And they get it quicker.

Reversing the gender-bending of the Elizabethan theatre, this Hamlet is played by a woman, Alina Phelan, who offers a major enhancement to the play. She is quite remarkable, passionate, and pure; after the first minutes of the play it no longer matters that he is a she. Horatio (Tim Sheridan) is fine as Hamlet's stalwart, as are Carolyn Hennesy as the sexy Gertred, Hamlet's mother; Spencer Robinson and Dan Wingard as Rossencraft and Gilderstone, Stewart Skelton as Hamlet's father and his uncle, EZRA BUZZINGTON as a chittering Corambis (Polonius in the Folio), a balding Laertes (Christopher Nieman), and a very different, larger-than-life Kathryn Stockwood as Ofelia, no shrinking violet.

We may dismiss the poetry of the original folio Hamlet, but the speeded-up action means we can absorb the action of the play more deeply; there's time for an intermission, and we can catch the early bus home, while still enjoying the angry passion of a tale amazingly told that's comprehensible, quick and easy to absorb. It's scarcely Shakespeare lite, but it is Shakespeare immediate, even if we have to contain a giggle when Marcellus says, "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."

Director Andrew Borba reins in the play to accessible bounds, keeping us alert and interested, and each performance is a gem. Robert Oriol's moody lighting, Amy Kane's sound, Lauren Helpern's set, and Bo Foxworth's fight choreography help this production zing along."

Bill Robens and Steve Marca's spoof of Irwin Allen's disaster opus is loads of silly, late-night fun. But the comedy misfires with the recreation of too many scenes and too few songs. (The homoeroticized paean to San Francisco firemen is a hoot, as is the mock-serious opening number.) Robens and Marca also direct this campy romp, ably moving a huge cast through numerous scene changes, and while most of the gags are a goof, some of the more self-indulgent bits need to be streamlined or cut. The really wacky humor works - gasoline spews from the sprinkler system, and wieners are found in the electrical circuitry. Stacy Mathewson is consistently funny as Paul Newman's hip-thrusting architect. Richard Osborn and Robens are also quite good as, respectively, William Holden's cost-cutting financial magnate and Richard Chamberlain's venal son-in-law. Leanne Fonteyn's choreography of a character named Fire (marvelously played by Amy Roulet, Miquel Montalvo and Fonteyn) never ceases to be amusing. Kudos as well for Monroe Makowsky and Daniel Mailley's hilariously inventive cardboard and duct tape set design and Kiff Scholl and Dorie Barton's equally low budget costume and prop design.

In the center of NOTE's tiny stage, standing at least a solid 6 or 7 feet high, is a replica of the Tower. Fringes of red and silver tinsel wave and shimmer inside the windows - an obvious hint of what's to come. Then, like the hot blast from a furnace, the sizzling pre-show music assaults us. Songs like "Hot Stuff" and "Hot, Hot, Hot" immediately encourage the audience to embrace the campy mood for this silly late-night spoof of that blazing disaster epic, The Towering Inferno.

Written and directed by Bill Robens and Steve Marca, The Towering Inferno: The Musical burns through roughly 90 minutes of bad jokes, low-tech thrills and chills, and a few scattered songs that, except for the catchy Psycho-sounding opening number and one about stout-hearted San Francisco firemen (songs not identified in the program), never really catch fire. But spit-and-polish perfection is clearly not the goal here. Diversion, a sense of fun and late-night laughs are all that await this particular finish line. And with that criteria - and despite the irritating cackles of friends in the audience who feel compelled to scream and laugh uproariously at every little bit, whether it works or not - the show generally succeeds.

Credit much of that success to Stacy Mathewson, who plays hot-headed "Paul Newman as Doug (the Architect)" with a hilarious degree of super-macho manliness and blistering bravado. Robens is also notable in the embellishment of "Richard Chamberlain as Frank Simmons", the swaggering alcoholic contractor whose cost-saving cutbacks are responsible for the conflagration. And further fanning flames of comedy are Miquel Mntalvo, Amy Roulette and choreographer Leanne Fonteyn, dressed in black and red and sparkling with sequins, who personify Fire in all its smoldering-to-raging permutations. Kiff Scholl and Dorie Barton's costumes and props also elicit many laughs, from the powder-blue tuxedos and hideous polyesters of the period to the tiny helicopter that swirls above the Tower while the rooftop rescue mission is underway.

It may not be great theatre, but there's enough sizzle here to make the heat of a summer's night far more enjoyable.

Bill Robens and Steve Marca, co-adapters and co-directors of "The Towering Inferno - The Musical" at Theatre of NOTE, took on a tall order - every pun intended - when they decided to roast Irwin Allen's' 1974 disaster movie "The Towering Inferno". Robens and Marca certainly get points for moxie, as does their huge and ready cast, but the play only infrequently reaches the heights of inspired lunacy required for successful parody.

Before you venture into parody, you must carefully consider the source, and as source material, "Inferno" is innately problematic. The movie's certainly a rattling potboiler by any standard, but whether it has the iconic amp value of, say, "Valley of the Dolls" remains an open question. Also daunting is the movies' sheer heft - almost three hours of non-stop action, fueled by high-tech razzle-dazzle, melodramatic subplots and the kind of lightning-fast scene changes that can only be accomplished on film.

Ingeniously cheesy special effects go a long way toward bridging the gap between film and stage - but those impossibly paced scene changes prove a killer over the long haul, despite the cast's energetic efforts to keep the action lurching along. And calling this vehicle a musical is a misnomer. Marc Antonio Pritchett's original music is too occasional and undistinguished to justify the term. (Note - The is an error. The music was written by Robens and Marca. Marc Antonio Pritchett was Musical Director. Not composer. - Ezra)

Spunky performances, however, keep the edifice from collapse. In his role as the architect played by Paul Newman in the film, Stacy Mathewson is particularly noteworthy playing a chisel-jawed stalwart who just can't figure out how all that gasoline got into the sprinkler system. The fire itself is personified by torrid, Fosse-esque dancers - one of the frequent touches of whimsy that keep the action cheerfully flickering if not actively ablaze.

One of the most maligned nominations in Oscar history occurred in 1975, after Irwin Allen's megabucks disaster epic "The Towering Inferno" (generally considered a turkey), was announced as a candidate for Best Picture. Having never seen the film, this critic approached the campy parody "The Towering Inferno: The Musical" by writer/directors Bill Robens and Steve Marca, with an open mind and an appetite for a delicious roast. Perhaps someone familiar with the film would enjoy this spoof more than I did, but one would hope a project like this would sling enough generic barbs at the hokey disaster-film genre to elicit wide accessibility. The playbill identifies not only the character but the actors from the film (i.e., "Richard Osborn is William Holden as J.D.") which does help somewhat in bringing "inferno" virgins such as I in on the jokes. There's a wealth of energy, a few choice performances and some great visual gags to enjoy. but the overall endeavor, in its current state, is too repetitious and uneven to become the camp classic it obviously aspires to be. An enormous cast of hammy performers glide across the cheesy set and throughout the postage-stamp-sized auditorium for 90 minutes of insanity - sometimes inspired, and other times just inane. Faring best with the incredibly cornball dialogue is Stacy Mathewson in the cardboard lead role of "Paul Newman as Doug the architect," an aging self-important matinee idol trying to pretend this malarkey makes some sense. In a bit of color-blind casting, the engaging Andrea Kim Walker steps into the glamourpuss shoes of "Faye Dunaway as Susan." The gimmick of having three actors spreading their imaginary flames to the best of Fonteyn's zany choreography and attired in hilarious costumes by Kiff Scholl and Dorie Baron is a hoot. The 'gigantic" skyscraper of the title is also worth a few yucks, looking like a feeble combination of cardboard and tinfoil. The handful of original songs deliver less-than-gangbuster results. On the comedy barometer, this innocuously goofy offering registers as more luke warm than red-hot, needing to be sent back for more time on the burner.

Only one of these plays actually defies death - the other two just haven't quite succumbed yet. All three, however, are well-written and worthy of attention. Christopher Kelley's Near Death is the only flat-out comedy of the trio, a reversal of deathbed cliches wherein an obstreperous family turns on a priest who's there to deliver the last rites. Under Kelley's direction, Scott McKinley is a standout as the hapless cleric, whose morals degenerate quickly and completely. Christopher DeWan's The Man Who Looked for the World in a Fortune Cookie (and Found It) is a touching if slight slice-of-life playlet focusing on a broken older man's heart-rending attempt to connect with his adult son. DeWan's writing skimps on character development, though his direction adeptly shapes EZRA BUZZINGTON's performance as the Old Man into a simple yet evocative portrait of loneliness. Erik Patterson's Tonseisha is the highlight of the triple bill, an odd story of how a Japanese woman's obsession with the writer Richard Brautigan both enriches and destroys her life. Patterson's writing is original, poetic and funny, with this one-act receiving a spendid staging under Tim Hanson's assured direction. Fay Kato's performance is a tour de force, a balancing act between madness and bliss that makes this play sing. Theater of Note, 1517 Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood.