Seattle Area Readers: Clear Your Weekend Schedules

Image credit: Photo by Mike Wilson for Burien Little Theatre.

You’ve only got three opportunities left. Then Inspecting Carol will be gone forever, and you’ll have missed the chance to laugh your way to a hernia. So choose a showing:

December 16 at 8:00 p.m. – Friday

December 17 at 8:00 p.m. – Saturday

December 18 at 2:00 p.m. – Sunday 

Buy your ticket. Go.

Burien Little Theatre always puts on something whacked out for the holidays. None of this sappy-happy crap for them. Oh, no. It’s usually hilarious, always completely warped, and a great antidote to all that cloying Christmas music you’ve been enduring. Inspecting Carol was no exception to that rule. It’s chaos right from the very beginning. And you think you know where it’ll end up, but it doesn’t go there. It turns left at Albuquerque and ends up – well, by then you’re laughing too hard to notice the “Welcome to X” sign.

It’s got a whole bunch of these perfect little moments. You will never hear the word “utensils” in quite the same way again. And the ending. Just when you think the ending’s going to sag just a bit, it hits this crescendo of absurdity that caps the whole thing like that one perfect cherry on a Dadaist banana split.

You will see an Asian in a serape and a diaper, and it will make sense.

You will see some of the best worst acting in the business.

You will see Scrouge holding stuffed animals.

You will see a person in a dress doing a back-crawl on stage.

And you will marvel at the technical aspects, because just like you have to be a superb actor to play a bad one, you have to be technically perfect to pull off multiple stage disasters.

The actors did a phenomenal job. They don’t stop acting when the focus isn’t on them, either. Spare a glance for those on the periphery of the scenes, because their reactions are priceless. It’s just marvelous, what they’ve done. They’re all fantastic, and while I doubt anything will ever dethrone Martha, Josie and the Christmas Elvis as my all-time favorite fucked-up holiday play, this came perilously close.

So just go. Don’t deprive yourselves. And give a huge round o’ applause to the actors who made this such a delight. They were amazing, every one.

  • Andy Beal (Luther Beatty)
  • Sarah Bixler (MJ McMann)
  • Robert Harkins (Sidney Carlton)
  • Eric Hartley (Phil Hewlitt)
  • Adam Hegg (Kevin Emery)
  • Nathaniel Jones (Wayne Wellacre)
  • Russ Kay (Larry Vaushall)
  • Kevin Schilling (Bart Frances)
  • Tim Takechi (Walter E. Parsons)
  • Vera Werre (Dorothy Tree-Hapgood)
  • Rochelle Wyatt (Inspector Betty Andrews)
  • Yvette Zaepfel (Zorah Bloch)

If you went to Frankenstein, you’ll recognize Russ Kay, who was The Monster. I just want to say that he makes a gorgeous dude-playing-Scrouge. Nathaniel’s one of my favorites from many other BLT productions, but he’s never slayed me like he did this time round. And Vera Werre – just delightful. Tim Takechi was fucking incredible. So were all of them, and I’m going to stop naming names now because we’ll be here all night – just bloody go see the show, m’kay?

And forgive them for making Los Links a day late. If you see the show, you’ll understand why that was worth it.

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Seattle Area Readers: Clear Your Weekend Schedules
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One thought on “Seattle Area Readers: Clear Your Weekend Schedules

  1. 1

    I just read the synopsis and part of the script, and lol’d! Oh boy, did I lol!!! Being the resident stage manager in my group… Let me just say that the script could have been taken from pretty much every show I’ve managed! I’ve also acted in shows where I was the “Chronic health problem” guy, and the “Veteran who doesn’t know his lines” guy as well.

    I really wish that I could get to Seattle for the show, but I can’t get a passport by this weekend. (Plus, it’s a 12 hour drive from here.)

    Hmmm… Maybe I’ll speak to a director in my group and see if we can put this one on, it sounds like a lot of fun! Do you know where I can get a script?

    -A-

    PS: re: Los Links, you’re forgiven ;)

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