By Daniel Sullivan

and the Seattle Repertory Theatre 

Director John Pryor

Performances
April 22-25, 2010

at the Goddard Center

For the next few months leading up to December, there is a ramshackle, barely equity theatre rehearsing in Weed, CA at the College of the Siskiyous. It is called the Soapbox Playhouse.

 

Soapbox is rehearsing and presenting its tired annual bread and butter production of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, directed by artistic director Zorah Bloch. Overmatched against Larry Vauxhall, her demonically domineering Scrooge, Ms. Bloch is losing control of the production.

 
 
Foremost among a myriad of problems that Soapbox is facing is a debilitating 50% subscription renewal rate which has left its coffers empty. Additionally, Soapbox has just received word that the National Endowment for the Arts is withholding in its entirety this year’s expected grant of $30,000, without which it cannot survive.
 
 

On to the plight of the Soapbox. Aspiring actor Wayne Wellacre is seeking to join the company. An amateur with a delusional belief that he is talented. Wayne claims to be a professional in order to induce Soapbox to hire him. At this time, the company is informed that the NEA is sending an inspector to visit the company in order to make a final determination concerning the suspended grant, Ms. Bloch having concluded that Wayne is certainly not an actor, determines that he must be the NEA inspector.

  

As a result, Wayne is hired and catered to, resulting in a burgeoning of his already inflated ego. Carol captures all the hilarity inherent in this backstage farce which combines Gogol’s The Inspector General with Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
 
   

The laughter reaches its zenith late in the evening when we see several scenes from the Soapbox Carol. When the Actual NEA inspector finally arrives

 

Courtesy of Samuel French