Getting Corralled at A Christmas Carol

Cora Values, proprietor and chef of the Gas-N-Gulp in Rectal, Texas, invited us back this year for another holiday treat. This year she and her neighbor/performers provided an "illiterary adaptation" of Dicken's A Christmas Carol at Cora Value's A Christmas Corral. As the one sheet says: We beat the Dickens out of it but kept the spirit."

Looking back, I did not read the Facebook Event materials closely (I always buy a ticket if there is a Sean Owens or Cora Values holiday show). The online blurb includes:

EXIT Theatre's holiday hostess Cora Values is back, direct from the Gas 'N' Gulp out on I-19! And she's unearthed a 'forgotten literary classic,' Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Sadly, Cora has several pages and a few cast members missing-- and possibly a few marbles.


But at "Cora Values' Christmas Corral," there's no Ghost she can't wrangle, and no audience member she won't rope into the action! Join a merry band of truck stop regulars for a deep-fried retelling of this beloved holiday story, featuring brand-new original songs from the songwriting team of Don Seaver and Sean Owens. All that's missing is the perfect stooge-- er, Scrooge!

Yes, well, I was that Stooge. After the show started and the exposition set, as it were, Cora began asking certain male audience members to read a line from the Christmas Carol script. It was the single line "Bah!" A man a few rows in front of me gave it a shot and Cora asked if he felt he sounded strong and commanding with his bah. Waldorf turned to Statler and said under his breath "I think he sounds like a sheep."

Then Cora asked me to read, so I gave the "Bah" line my best "Baaaaah." (oh ewe!) I was then pulled on stage, sent behind the curtain and bedecked in a red velvet robe, "wig" and wool hat (and it was already hot in there). And so I played Scrooge, script in hand, for the entire 90 minute show. Some times as straight man and sometimes as the joke.




Sean (Owens, Writer/Director/Cora) and I can play well off each other in conversation and can banter cleverly with one-upmanship of quips fairly endlessly. And we have a shared affection for ridiculously deplorable puns. I really can lie about this: I had a BALL. I had a hard time gauging how big to play it, and settled on a 7. Of course, a Hardcastle 7 is an average persons 13. But I finished the show with rave reviews and most of the audience thought I was a plant and it had all been meticulously rehearsed. High praise indeed. (I was also pulled from backstage to front to join the entire cast for the final music number, which of course I did not know. I was reading over Cora's shoulder and keeping up pretty well, enough for him to break character and say, "He's just sight reading this and my copy doesn't even have any music!." Luckily Tiny Tim's did and she opened her script for me.)




And to think just minutes earlier I was feeling all down and nauseated and flushed and thought "If I can just make it through the show..." I don't know what cured what ailed me. Kevin thinks it was the Guinness, which he had prescribed medicinally. I think it was the stage.