2005: The Three Scrooges - Comedy Christmas Cabaret.

 The Three Scrooges - Comedy Christmas Cabaret.  Shortis, Simpson and Casey directed by Carissa Campbell.  The Street Theatre Studio November 24 - December 10, 8.30pm.  Bookings: 6247 1223

    Pssssst....  I won't reveal my source but I've just had a leak.  The trouble is if I tell you about it the law will get me.  I'll disappear for two weeks and then I won't even be able to tell you I disappeared for another two years.  Sedition, I guess, would be the charge.  But no-one would ever know, including me.

    Maybe I can get around the problem by telling you that this is a terrible show.  It's funny, for a start.  Even worse, it's satirical.  It even makes fun of the actual words spoken by our great leader of the free world and his little mate.  And the music ... well, I can only say it is dreadfully so well done that you might be inveigled into enjoying the art and not realising that this is really the work of the devil.  Comedy Christmas Cabaret indeed!

    Don't be fooled.  The worst part is that the now traditional John Shortis and Moya Simpson combination has been horribly enlivened by the voice and keyboard playing that only seems to come from heaven, though it actually comes from Peter J. Casey.  If you thought Shortis and Simpson were unbearable last year, this combination is impossible now.  It's surely the fault of the faceless Carissa Campbell.  Only she could have choreographed the excellent Dance of the Latham Diaries - probably the only part of the show which might pass muster at ASIS.

    But I have to be careful not to reveal that, though this is perhaps the most irreligious Christmas show one can imagine, Shortis's solo about what has happened to Christmas in our globalised economy is even sadder this year.  Of course no-one can accept without a groan the disgusting representation of royalty, especially of Princess Di whose fashion photos were all over the Canberra Times front page on opening night.  But the implied relationship between Princess Mary and her boy child suggested some higher understanding.

    All in all, I can't say this was a great night out.  That was just a leak, and the perpetrator will be brought to justice.  I think I might just disappear at this point,  and don't let yourself be seen at The Street, or you might never be seen again either.  Bye-ee!

© Frank McKone, Canberra