Clickable Advent Calendar, 1 - Invasion: Christmas Carol

During the Christmases of my childhood, I always enjoyed advent calendars and the daily ritual of opening a little door to reveal a new surprise for each day of December until the 25th. Taking the advent calendar as inspiration, this month I’ll offer some tongue-in-cheek holiday blog entries, with the idea that clicking on, say, embedded video or “For the rest of this entry” lines are the online equivalent to opening a cardboard calendar window. First up is Invasion: Christmas Carol at Dad’s Garage, which is the only version of the Scrooge story where you may hear a word like “bacne.” Or “turduckephant.”

The Christmas Carol satire rejiggers the “invasion” concept the theater used in last year’s Invasion: Our Town. Both shows turn a theatrical classic upside down by the addition of a mid-show “invader” who’s not only new to the text, but hasn’t been seen by the rest of the cast, who have to incorporate the visitor on the fly. Dad’s likes to draft current or defunct roles from its long-running improvised soap opera Scandal! as the invader, and on Christmas Carol’s opening night Scott Warren played the Ghost of Christmas Past as a blustering barbarian in a loin clout. The nightly invader, isn’t the most surprising aspect of Invasion, however, but the casting of Ebenezer Scrooge himself. I’ll put the detail behind the cut to avoid spoilers, although the end of Dad’s trailer for the show gives it away: