So bad it’s good

Scrooge in Rouge is so bad it’s good, and that’s not easy.

The conceit of this In Tandem Theatre show, now in its third holiday run, is that a British musical hall company, c. 1900, is to stage a musical version of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  You get the impression that this troupe is pretty sketchy at full strength of 23. But in the show we see, food poisoning at the previous night’s cast party has reduced the company to three actors, who must cover all the parts.

By 30 seconds in, we can’t miss the fact that airhead-diva Lottie, company manager Charlie and Vesta are incorrigible hams armed with a script shot through with groaner puns. Matt Daniels sings falsetto and dresses in drag as Lottie. Chris Flieller’s Charlie alternates between manic efforts to engage the audience and droll despair about his idiot company’s ability to do anything right. Marcella Kearns’s Vespa, cross-dressed as Scrooge, takes a stab at the character now and then, but just can’t resist seeking audience approval or making jokes at her colleagues’ expense.

So Charlie, Lottie and Vesta are absolutely terrible at their jobs. But Daniels, Flieller and Kearns, directed by Jane Flieller, are brilliant at theirs. This dissonance is funny in itself. So is the boundless energy that these actors instill into their characters. Despite their incompetence and total lack of understanding of Dickens’ story, these cartoonish musical hall boobs love show business to a degree that conquers all.

My favorite telling bit is the spry, charming and totally inappropriate dance step that Kearns uses to punctuate every speech — even after lines about, say, reducing the surplus population through starvation. It gets weirdly funnier as she repeats it, which must be upwards of 30 times.

Flieller and Daniels, too, move with a charming, energetic lift as they dance about and sing one deliciously inane song after another. Jefferson Turner’s original music, with lyrics and book by Ricky Graham, fits the era of pre-jazz pop. Some of it sounds like sentimental musical-hall ballads, but most of the songs patter along like Gilbert & Sullivan. Groaner jokes abound in the songs, too, of course. It would have been all to easy to bang on the piano with such music, but David Bonofiglio lavished a silken touch on both the keys and the phrases. Bonofiglio is a big reason this show never becomes strident.

For Scrooge in Rouge to work, the trains must run exactly on time in order to create the impression of a train wreck. Flieller brought out back-stage dresser Eleanor Cotey for a well-earned bow at the end. Dozens and dozens of Kathleen Smith’s ingenious costumes change happened as if by magic, but they didn’t. Cotey made them happen.

And as the costumes changed, so did the characters Charlie, Lottie and Vesta play. Sometimes, they got confused about who they were supposed to be, and that was funny. Daniels, Flieller and Kearns always knew exactly who they were, and that was craft at a very high level.

This review is based on Thursday night’s preview performance. The actual opening is set for 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 2. Scrooge in Rouge runs 27 times, through New Year’s Eve shows, at In Tandem’s Tenth Street Theatre, 628 N. 1oth St., at Wisconsin Avenue. For ticket and schedule information, visit In Tandem’s website.