I don't know what's most disappointing about A Queer Carol, the current offering by Gypsy Productions at St. Petersburg's Suncoast Theatre. The script is mediocre, much of the acting is regrettable, and there's nothing very pleasing about the costume or set design. But what disturbs me most is that Gypsy chose this play and this production at all, that artistic director Trevor Keller and his crew were willing to foist this sort of third-rate work upon an unsuspecting public.
Errors of this sort are understandable when committed by a newly minted company; it can take months for the artists who run a troupe to learn that they don't work in total freedom after all, that audiences and critics will reward substandard work with empty seats and pans. But Gypsy's been producing plays for a while now; you'd think that the company would already have learned that, in the arts as in all professions, nothing short of excellence is good enough.
But then, how to explain A Queer Carol, with its limp drama, its community-theater-level actors and its implicit suggestion that spectators won't know the difference? Somehow someone should have stopped this thing long before it reached the stage.
A Queer Carol is a gay revision of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, but the inventiveness of the script stops there. Author Joe Godfrey introduces us to an Ebenezer Scrooge who's a celebrated, successful interior decorator, but who's so committed to making money that he sneers at Christmas revelry and works his staff at all hours.
When his employee Bob Cratchit asks for an extra day off, Scrooge meanly refuses; when a holiday fundraiser asks for a donation to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, Scrooge can't be bothered. A Queer Carol is at its best during these early scenes, when it appears that playwright Godfrey will shrewdly rework the Dickens classic into an unfamiliar but important shape. (Unfortunately, the acting disturbs us virtually from the very start — more about that later.) After the play's first few minutes, we're prepared for some ingenious dramaturgy.
It never arrives. The last unproblematic scene involves the arrival of a chain-laden ghost of Jacob Marley, on hand to warn Scrooge that his one chance of avoiding a hellish end is to learn from the coming visit of Three Spirits.
The first Spirit arrives as — believe it or not — Marilyn Monroe. As the Ghost of Christmas Past, she sings snatches of her favorite songs, alludes briefly to her famous movies, and generally fails to justify herself to Scrooge or to us. She also shows Scrooge his childhood as a gay 10-year-old appreciated by his mother and scorned by his father.
From this point of the script on, the dialogue is pedestrian, drab, uninspired to the extreme. (SCROOGE: "I wish Christmas could be every day. Don't you, Mom?" MOM: "Then it wouldn't be so special, would it, Ben?" SCROOGE: "Can we open a present now? Please?" MOM: "Daddy's not home yet. Just another half hour or so. Then we'll each open one and save the rest for Christmas Day." SCROOGE: "I made Daddy something he'll really love," etc.)
And it continues as such when Scrooge passes from boarding school into the employ of an indomitable gay man by the name of Fezziwig. There, Scrooge meets another young worker, Jacob Markowitz (later changed to Marley). They flirt, they kiss, they go home and make love, they buy out Fezziwig's business and are set to grow old and prosper. But Marley is into loose sex and lots of drugs, and eventually gets sick and dies. The business belongs to Scrooge now, and money is all he loves.
Enter the Ghost of Christmas Present — a drag queen who leads Scrooge to observe Bob Cratchit and his lover Tim — that's right, Tiny Tim — as they enjoy the holiday season with their friends Carol and Maria. Tim has AIDS but is on an upswing, and the partiers cheer one another with some of the most tiresome sex jokes ever offered on the live stage. ("To make a good dill bread, you have to start with — a good dill dough"… "Does size really matter? … I don't know. Why don't you ask Tiny Tim?")
Scrooge also sees various acquaintances, some playing Gay Trivia, one being mistreated by her husband. Finally, the Ghost of Christmas Future appears — as a piercing light and a portentous soundtrack suggesting the end of Ebenezer Scrooge. Will the miser reform? Will the play finally end? We're reminded of what Truman Capote said of Jack Kerouac: "That's not writing, that's typing." We've had to endure two hours of typing, and just want to be back in the relatively eloquent real world.
The acting is the other problem. Artistic director Keller as old Scrooge has but one nasty note for seven-eighths of the play; and the monotony hits us after only a few minutes. As young Scrooge, Christian Maier is, at least, less goofy than in his previous Gypsy appearances, but still far from seeming a three-dimensional human with an interesting interior life.
Derek Baxter's Bob Cratchit is so retiring that you almost can't blame Scrooge for wanting to abuse him, and most of the other actors seem like earnest amateurs not ready for prime time. The few exceptions are Lisa Ruzzi as Scrooge's housekeeper Svetlana, Carlos Milan as Jacob Marley and Daryl Epperly as the Ghost of Christmas Present: All carry themselves as professionals, and remind us of a world where high standards reign.
Keller and Derek Baxter's direction is flabby; Keller and Robert N. Dewitt's set makes a small stage seem smaller; and DeWitt and New Millennia Studio's costumes are so eclectic that we cease paying attention to them after a while.
Of course, when a script is this substandard, its mediocrity insidiously touches everything that concerns it. So it's hard to tell precisely where one defect ends and another begins.
What next for Gypsy Productions? The good news: Their 2006 season includes plays as worthy as The Boys in the Band and Twilight of the Golds. But audiences, unlike critics, can decide not to come back to a theater after a flop, can conclude that one or two bad experiences is experience enough. If Gypsy doesn't (a) produce only exceptional plays and (b) hire only professional-grade actors, it's going to lose its ticket-buyers. Now is the time for this company to consolidate its paying audience, not shoo it away.
The next few months will tell us a lot about the Bay area's only gay theater. To what degree is it committed to quality?
At the moment, the evidence is far from encouraging.
This article appears in Nov 30 – Dec 6, 2005.