(GK: Garrison Keillor, TR: Tim Russell, SS: Sue Scott, TK: Tom Keith, CK: Charles Keating)
GK: It's our Twelfth Night show, celebrating the end of the old extended Christmas, the festival that went on for almost two weeks of merriment and dancing and gift-giving and feasting and singing and celebration, until it was cut short by economists, who decided you could get the same amount of consumer spending without the loss of all that productivity.
It's a time for ballet companies to celebrate (NUTCRACKER QUOTE) ---- all of those windfall revenues from the 85 performances of The Nutcracker and the big profits in the gift shop ----- a ballet that features animals and toy soldiers is a boon to marketing, and the Nutcracker is a ballet that grandparents attend with their granddaughters ---- and grandparents can't pay enough for anything a little girl would like ----
SS GIRL: Can I have the Nutcracker T-shirt, Grandpa?
TR GEEZER: This t-shirt here, Julie? The $75 t-shirt? Of course. How about one of these little nutcrackers, too?
SS GIRL: Okay.
TR GEEZER: Get one of those nutcrackers, Doris.
SS GRANDMA: They're $200, Earl. (TR HEART ATTACK) Grandpa had a coronary episode, Julie. Help me roll him over so I can get his billfold.
GK: It's a time for choirs to celebrate (MESSIAH QUOTE) ----- those sold-out performances of Handel's Messiah and many actors are grateful for the work doing "A Child's Christmas In Wales"-----
CK: And it was childhood and it was wrapping paper and the curling smoke of candles and turkey and pudding and walnuts and whiskey and it was life and big-bosomed aunts and music on the Victrola and it was there in the goose-grease damp and dew of the mistletoe-moist Christmas-stockinged wonder of it all, and winter, they say, winter is a-cumen in.
GK: And of course theater companies are celebrating (TK TINY TIM: God bless us, every one.) the cash cow that is Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" -----
CK: How did the gift shop do, Mr. Cratchit?
TR: Excellent, Mr. Scrooge. We sold out the Tiny Tim Christmas cards and everything.
CK: Bless my soul. The American hunger for Victorian knick-knacks never abates, does it. The gew-gaws, the brick-a-brack, the dolls, the miniature street scenes, anything with a lamppost---- they suck it up like a vacuum cleaner. Very well. Next year, we'll extend the run into January, and we'll add a spirit.
TR: Add a spirit, sir?
CK: We've got Christmas Past, and Present, and Future, and we'll add a Spirit of Christmas Pluperfect. And we'll add another fog machine. And real horses. And more children, Cratchit.
TR: But we already have more than fifty street urchins in the cast now, sir.
CK: People want to see children on stage, Cratchit. Small children with button noses and winsome facial expressions. Look at "The King and I," "The Sound of Music," "Waiting for Godot"-----
TR: "Waiting for Godot" had no children, sir----
CK: In my production it did. The children sat and waited for Godot too, and while they waited they danced and sang little songs. And in my production, Godot came. And he brought presents. Very popular.
TR: Sir? May I ask a question, sir?
CK: What is it, Cratchit?
TR: Next year, could I play Scrooge?
CK: You? Play Scrooge? (HE LAUGHS CRUELLY) But you're a brilliant Cratchit, sir! You're so good at cringing and bootlicking! I could never cringe and bootlick and tug at my forelock the way you do! I don't have the talent for it!
TR: I could teach you, sir----
CK: Impossible! I'm simply unable to do obsequious ---- it's simply not in me. I ---- what are you doing? (CLICK OF GUN HAMMER)
TR: This is a revolver, Mr. Scrooge. It's loaded. And if I can't be Scrooge next year, then neither can you. (HE CHUCKLES)
CK: Please, Bob. Don't be foolish. Put it away, Bob---
TR: Oh it's Bob now, is it? Bob! How about I call you Ezer, huh? Down on your knees, Ezer.
CK: I'm on my knees, Bob.
TR: Let me see you crawl.
CK: I'm crawling, Bob. Listen----how about I raise your salary, Bob? And give you an extra scuttle of coal?
TR: I say, rats on it, Ezer. I say it's my turn to bah humbug and then have the big change of heart scene and run around and whoop and jump up and down and buy the goose. I'm tired of saying, "It's only once a year, sir." I'm sick of it. (DOOR OPEN)
SS: Hold it right there----
TR: Why, Mrs. Cratchit----
SS: Don't Mrs. Cratchit me. I've done Mrs. Cratchit for the last time, you sniveling idiot. Next year, I'm going to be Scrooge.
CK: You? But----how?
SS: The time for a female Scrooge has come. Women are sick of playing generic sympathetic characters. I want to play Evelina Scrooge. She's visited by the Spirits and they convince her to come out of the closet as a gay woman ----- and then she's visited by her former partner Jacqueline Marley, and there's a lot of chains, there's a big bondage scene at the end, and-----
TK: Hold on just a bleedin minute, there----
CK: Tiny Tim! Holding a shotgun!
TK: Guess you thought this was a crutch, eh? Well, maybe it is, but I wouldn't hesitate to use it on any one of you. So drop the revolver, dogface.
TR: Dogface! What's got into you, Tim? You used to be good as gold, you did.
TK: Drop it. (GUN FALLS) I'm done with sitting in a chimney corner and smiling til my face hurts. Us crippled kids are tired of always having to be cheerful and brave.
CK: What do you want, Tim? You want to be Fred?
TK: I'm going to be the playwright.
CK: You???
TK: I'm going to rewrite "A Christmas Carol" from Tiny Tim's point of view. It's going to be a dark story, a brutal story, a story about hostages and ----
CK: Stop it! Stop it! (SLAP) Pull yourselves together, all of you!
TK: You struck me. You struck a crippled child. Wait til "Sixty Minutes" hears about this.
CK: We've got to stop this---- this bickering, this divisiveness, this infighting----- we're a theater company, a family, we have to pull together if we're going to survive in this world. And in three weeks, we open "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof".
SS: You don't say, Big Daddy. You hear that, Brick? Big Daddy is fixing to open "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" in three weeks. Think you can learn your lines by then?
TR: I'll learn em.
CK: Maybe if you put that bottle away, you might learn em a little faster, Brick.
SS: Big Daddy's right. You been getting yourself all goggle-eyed so's when you finally find your way to bed, you ain't of much use to Maggie anymore.
TR: Only reason I go for the whiskey is to drown out the sounds of your voices, both of you. Always raggin on me----criticizin----- tearin me down!
CK: What's tearin you down, son, is something inside you. Something you ain't never understood. Something you're trying to kill. And you never can. Look at me when I'm talking to you! And get that pig out of here! (PIG SQUEAL) And get those chickens off the table! (CHICKEN FLURRY)
(MUSICAL BRIDGE)
GK: Yes, the theater goes on, and the choir, and the ballet, and here on our show we celebrate the 12th night of Christmas with our traditional Christmas Jell-o with a sprig of holly on top, and of course we serve that with our traditional dog dancing. And here's our dog right here (WOOF)----
SS: (SOTTO) That's clog dancing, not dog dancing.
GK: What?
SS (SOTTO): It's clog dancing.
GK: Oh. Not dog dancing?
SS: No.
GK: Well, he's here and ready to go, so here's our dancing dog. (DOG DANCE, LITTLE WOOFS, TAPS, TO "TEA FOR TWO" W. STOPS)
(c) 2000 by Garrison Keillor