THE SANTA NICK VERSES–A CORPORATE CHRISTMAS CAROL
at Red Bones Theatre
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Developed by the ensemble under the direction of Barbara Wallace, The Santa Nick Verses (its title a labored pun on Salman Rushdie’s proscribed novel) takes place at the annual Christmas office party/shareholders’ meeting of the Wholesome Family Greeting Card Company. After the “shareholders” (audience members) are welcomed, given name tags, and led in a caroling sing-along, we plunge into the crisis besetting the 64-year-old company: sales are plummeting, union troubles threaten a strike, and management is in chaos.
To complicate this crisis two consultants from a rival card company, a British martinet (David Volin) and his Teutonic gay enforcer (Ed Shimp), arrive to attempt a clumsy takeover. They mean to scale down operations by firing everyone and introducing a new line of X-rated “Kama Sutra Christmas cards,” with messages like “Christmas is coming and so am I!” as well as overt suggestions of bestiality in the manger. In the play’s wildly overplotted, desperately contrived resolution, the two are exposed as impostors and undergo a Scroogelike redemption.
In this bilingual romp, English is a mere second language (as it was for the Czech-born playwright). The first tongue, spoken by members of a boys’ school, is Dogg, an internally consistent stew of British slang insults (“useless git”) and repulsively explicit phrases crushed together in German fashion. But the situations are so clear, the schoolboys’ reactions so obviously shaped by their surroundings, that the nonsense makes sense; an English-spouting carpenter who stops by to build the set for the school play soon finds himself speaking pidgin Dogg.
