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YP’s ‘Carol’ passes inspection
I hate Christmas. The lousy winter weather that traditionally accompanies it; the hard-sell cheer that assaults you wherever you go during the trumped-up season; and the cloying, sanctimonious treacle masquerading as “holiday entertainment.”
Despite a title which automatically triggers any self-respecting Scrooge’s gag reflex, Daniel J. Sullivan’s “Inspecting Carol” is, fortunately, nobody’s idea of “treacle.” The 1991 backstage farce which opened Friday night at the Youngstown Playhouse is an irreverent, frequently profane bit of anti-yuletide cheer. It’s also — particularly in the superior second act — laugh-out-loud funny. Bully for Playhouse executive director Mary Ruth Lynn for choosing a show that spits in the face of conventional tidings of comfort and joy.
Directed by Brian Lee, “Inspecting Carol” is hardly perfect. Act One is overlong, too exposition-heavy and mistakes freneticism for mirth. Not even the valiant efforts of a top-tier Playhouse cast (including such dependable heavy-hitters as Molly Galano, Jason Green and Connie Cassidy) can disguise the script’s considerable shortcomings. But just when you’re ready to dismiss “Carol” as yet another depressing instance where the actors are better than their material, Lee and his esteemed troupe stage a post-intermission rally that qualifies as something of a minor holiday miracle.
The set-up will be familiar to anyone who’s seen Michael Frayn’s dementedly meta British knee-slapper “Noises Off.” A hapless community theater company is in danger of losing their $30,000-a-year National Endowment for the Arts grant. To prove their mettle, they must convince a visiting NEA rep that the show — or their shows anyway — must go on. As expected, anything and everything that can go wrong (onstage and off) literally does. Hilarity intermittently ensues.
The entire cast is aces, with some of the biggest laughs earned by the redoubtable Galano as a transplanted British ham; Johnny R. Herbert (the sole black actor in the company, he’s forced to wear the politically-correct mantle of “multiculturalism” on his increasingly weary shoulders), Green (a howlingly inept wannabe actor whose “Richard III” audition piece is epically, memorably terrible) and the indefatigable Terry Shears (droll and biting as the theater troupe’s resident prima donna).
If that’s not enough, there’s also stellar work from Cassidy (amusingly harried as the seen-it-all director), Dawn Rogers (the cluck-clucking, Eve Arden-ish stage manager), Dave Wolford (a vain, hypochondriacal male diva), Tom O’Donnell (charming in one of the play’s least-defined roles), C. Richard Haldi (the exasperated general manager) and young Jacob Nash as the group’s frighteningly ambitious “resident juvenile” who jumps ship the second his agent lands him a network sitcom.
The handsome set by Playhouse tech directors Jim Lybarger and Johnny Pecano is typically sharp, and Cherie Stebner once again outdoes herself in the costume department (her outlandish sartorial choices for Herbert are particularly side-splitting).
For anyone as burned out by the faux rah-rah of the holiday season as yours truly, Lee’s spiked eggnog is the pause that definitely refreshes.
“Inspecting Carol” runs through next Sunday at the Youngstown Playhouse. For tickets, call 330-788-8739.