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Peer Reviews
A Don't Hug
Me Christmas Carol
A review by Kevin F. Temple
Entire contents are copyright © 2007 Kevin F. Temple.
All rights reserved.
"HOW FUN" are the two words I will choose
to describe my experience this evening, as A
Christmas Carol is given a different kind of
twist.
Bunbury Theatre brings to life an energy on
stage that should be on everyone's Christmas list.
A Don't Hug Me Christmas Carol is the third
show of Bunbury's inaugural season at its new location
in the historic Henry Clay building. The building
itself is extremely beautiful, and well decorated
for the season. The set is well designed, with
all of the trimmings of how a tavern should be decorated
during the holiday season in Bunyan Bay, Minnesota.
What happens when you take a once-madly-in-love couple and throw in
a little too much wanna-be manliness, then add
a few old friends, including one that happens to
be an old flame, and let one of them be visited
by four ghosts in the setting of a tavern? Answer:
You get a mash-up of Cheers meets A Christmas
Carol.
Did I mention it's a musical....How could I forget,
seeing as how at various points a song can just
start blaring out of the state-of-the-art karaoke
machine, which operates on voice command, playing
only the greatest hits of Sven Jorgensen.
The characters were lots of fun and full of energy
with all of their dancing and singing. Clara (Diane
Thurmond) and Gunner (Tim Mathistad) are the
ones once madly in love. You can see some great
chemistry between them, almost like they
were really married. Gunner, through a minor mishap,
gets visited by a few ghosts who help him identify
the trouble spots in his life. The ghosts, led
by old friend Sven Jorgensen (Jon Huffman) -- who
was his wife's old flame, as well as the person
who owes Gunner quite a bit of money -- starts
off as the weasel of the group. You get
a glimpse of different phases he went through in
order to write his songs. The songs are anything
but "craptacular," with every
song accompanied by some type of dancing, and
there is no short on the music or dancing as
they cover a variety of genres.
The friend Kanute (Rick O'Daniel-Munger) is the
Norman of this Cheers. He opens the show with
a beer, and in good continuity he ends the show
with a beer. Kanute is an eager beaver in trying
to rekindle a love with Bernice (Julie Zielinski).
His humor is well placed, and I believe every one
of us has a friend like him. Bernice, a traveling
singer, has come back for a job at the tavern only
to be hounded by Kanute, but through the use of
a beautiful voice and charm, she is able to hold
him off.
The only low side of the show was in trying to hear the vocals over
the karaoke
machine. The ones I caught made me laugh, I wished
I could have caught them all.
The show, in whole, was fabulous, and "ja, sure, you betcha" is
the only phrase I can think of that would be my
answer if asked to see it again.
A Don't Hug Me Christmas Carol
By Phil and Paul Olson
Directed by Matt Orme
Dec. 6-22, 2007: Wednesday-Saturday at 8 p.m.,
Sunday at 2 p.m.
Bunbury Theatre in the Henry Clay Building
502-585-5306
www.bunburytheatre.org
Posted Dec. 9, 2007
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