Pictured: Philip Nolen, Eric Hissom and Tim Williams
Every Christmas Story Ever Told
By Michael Carleton, John Alvarez and Jim Fitzgerald
November 30 to December 24, 2005 Southern premiere! Every Christmas Story Ever Told – yes – all of them - in 90 minutes! Three men and a “reingoat” tell tales of Christmas from around the world for one and all! Starring Eric Hissom, Philip Nolen and Timothy Williams. To purchase single tickets:If you know which show, date and seating section you want, go directly to our Online Ticketing Box Office. If not, we have plenty of information to help you, just follow the steps below: - Select your date using the calendar below, or by going to our new Season Calendar.
- Choose your seating section - Go to Stages
- Go to our Online Ticketing Box Office and purchase your ticket!
or call the Box Office
407-447-1700 x 1
Pictured: Tim Williams, Eric Hissom and Philip Nolen
or call the Box Office
407-447-1700 x 1CASTEric........................................................................................................Eric Hissom*
Philip......................................................................................................Philip Nolen*
Tim........................................................................................................Timothy Williams* * Denotes member of Actor's Equity Association, the professional actors union. 
Pictured: Philip Nolen, Tim Williams, and Eric Hissom
ReviewsFull Wassail!The Orlando Weekly
Review by Steve Schneider
Posted 12/08/06 What's a theater company to do when December rolls around? Well, you could always trot out A Christmas Carol again. It sure puts butts in seats, which may be why some troupes opt to run their productions of the Dickens perennial through July – or so a veteran scene-watcher lies in the hilarious, scorched-earth-and-mistletoe introduction to Every Christmas Story Ever Told!, the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival's knowing sendup of all things Noel.
While others bet the farm on Fezziwigian familiarity, OSF is hammering out a bolder tradition, that of using its annual PlayFest new-play festival (now the Harriett Lake Festival of New Plays) as the incubator for holiday shows that can shoot some rejuvenating comic voltage through Santa's fat and lazy carcass. Last year's fun The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge charted such a path from staged reading to main-stage hit; to the list we can now add Every Christmas Story … , in which a trio of wonderfully agile actors deconstructs the entire mythology of the season. Theatergoers whose formative image of Kris Kringle had him riding atop a Norelco razor are definitely the show's generational target market, but there's something in here to tweak everybody's mind-set, from a nutty recounting of the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer legend (with goats in place of deer, for legal reasons) to a running social-studies lesson in the Christmas customs of other lands. Outside the U.S., we're told, observances have a markedly sinister edge, with celebratory lutefisk meals barely masking the trauma of violent punishments dispensed by disapproving Claus-alikes. Bleed for that Xbox, Torsten!
The play makes use of a small arsenal of costumes, props and gaudy effects, but its success rests on the shoulders of the three co-stars, each of whom maintains a clearly delineated character type while donning and doffing holiday accouterments. Timothy Williams plays the verbose know-it-all, tossing out annoying factoids and using a fruitcake-themed game show as the forum to determine exactly how attractive the audience finds him. Philip Nolen, meanwhile, cuts an overgrown-toddler figure that can convey an absurd innocence, as when he literally crawls into another performer's lap for reassurance at a vulnerable moment. Finally, Eric Hissom is the vain master thespian who wants to junk all this experimental jazz and get on with his long-awaited starring role in – you guessed it – A Christmas Carol. In the cosmology of Every Christmas Story …, this makes him the antagonist.
The show was first conceived as a vehicle for out-of-state writer/actors John Alvarez, Jim Fitzgerald and Michael Carleton, the latter of whom joined Hissom and Nolen for a staged reading of it at last January's PlayFest. Since them, some scripted passages have been tightened up and others added. Almost every change is an improvement. Yet it's the addition of Williams that really brings the show to life. To cite but one difference, Carleton was content to act the wounded stooge when his castmates forced him to wear the antlers of the Grinch's dog, Max; Williams nails that mortification and then segues into a momentary but nicely observed bit of cheerful tongue-wagging. At such moments, the play accomplishes the small miracle of making all Christmas myths seem both utterly ridiculous and absolutely essential. Yes, Virginia, you can have your fruitcake and eat it, too. Holiday Show Offers All the Fruits and Nuts! Disparate Elements Merge hilariously!The Orlando Sentinel
Review by Elizabeth Maupin
Posted Dec 7th, 2006 At a time of year when there are so many crucial questions -- questions like "What did we do with our inflatable Santa?" and "Will I make it to Wal-Mart before closing?" it's easy to skip over this one:
"What's the deal with fruitcake?"
But that question, maybe not the biggest concern in the book, is nonetheless not too inconsequential to be included in Every Christmas Story Ever Told, the fruitcake of a comedy at the Lowndes Shakespeare Center. Like that dreaded Christmas confection, Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival's new production is full of a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And like a fruitcake, Every Christmas Story Ever Told can hit you like a ton of bricks.
Most theatergoers will welcome that punch in the gut because it comes from three Shakespeare Festival stalwarts, and even much-maligned fruitcake becomes fruitier and nuttier in their hands. Every Christmas Story Ever Told may not have the makings of a Christmas classic. But there's no doubt about it: Eric Hissom, Philip Nolen and Timothy Williams will make you laugh.
In a season when most performing-arts groups try to shore up their budgets by trotting out The Nutcracker, A Christmas Carol and their kin, Every Christmas Story Ever Told seems to have sprung from similar motives. This fractured compilation of Christmas's greatest hits derives shamelessly from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) and other Reduced Shakespeare Company comedies, several of which have been huge hits for Orlando Shakespeare in the past.
Actor-director Michael Carleton, who runs a theater in Cape May, N.J., and sometimes moonlights in Orlando, got together with two other Cape May actors to pull together a similar show with a Christmas theme. When a reading of it hit big at last winter's PlayFest, the Shakespeare Festival figured it had a winner on its hands.
The show is all the better for the treatment it has received from director Jim Helsinger, the three cast members and all the designers and technicians you never see. Somebody has been busy coming up with a plethora of wacky props. And Helsinger and his actors have tightened and polished the script to mostly good effect.
Of course, the premise is the same -- that two of the three actors rebel against performing one more Christmas Carol and, while their castmate is trying to intone Marley's death sentence, they throw in every other Christmas yarn they can dream up.
So this version gives you not only Tiny Tim but also Frosty the Snowman, Gustav the Green-Nosed Reingoat and a decidedly masculine Cindy Lou Who. For the Grinches in the crowd there are also some not-quite-Christmas characters -- a pirate, an Australian crocodile hunter and a wayward balloon from Macy's Thanksgiving-day parade.
Now, most of this is thrown together as if it had been assembled by Waring blender, and the longish first act, especially, feels haphazard and pretty darn inane. But an awful lot of theater fans ought to be willing to watch inanity from the likes of Hissom, Nolen and Williams, three actors who are quite capable of turning nothing into something more.
Take Hissom, for example, whose dour face makes for a thoroughly unhappy (and unwilling) Grinch, or Williams, who can find utter frustration in a completely shrouded Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Williams puts his dexterous voice to good use (he seems to play just about everybody in the capsule version of A Christmas Carol), and Hissom is a whiz at transforming his Scrooge into Jimmy-Stewart-as-George-Bailey, and back, in the blink of an eye.
For me, though, the prime reason to settle in at the Margeson Theater is to watch Nolen morph back and forth between a Santa-lover from Easter Island -- don't ask -- and the Norelco Santa, who stopped to shave the hairy shins of a shorts-clad theatergoer on opening night. Like his castmates, Nolen is quicker than quick. But there's something about his innocent persona and the way he inhabits his characters that makes them utterly believable -- even if his villainous Mr. Potter sounds stranger than Lionel Barrymore ever did. It's a Wonderful Life will never look quite the same again. 'Every Christmas Story Ever Told' Is A Gaudy Christmas PresentTheOtherOrlando.com
By Kelly Monaghan
Posted 12/08/06 If you're getting bored with seeing "A Christmas Carol" every December, grab Tiny Tim, shout a lusty "Bah, humbug!", and hie ye to the Orlando Shakespeare Festival, where three talented actors are making mincemeat pie of Christmas traditions with a gaudy confection of a show that will have you laughing harder than spiked egg nog.
"Every Christmas Story Ever Told" expropriates material from sources as diverse as "It's A Beautiful Life" and those old Christmas specials on TV sponsored by Norelco and tosses them into a madcap blender that bubbles over with wry wit and shameless belly laughs. As the play itself says, it's "Xmas Xtreme." The Orlando Shakespeare Festival has been making something of a cottage industry of producing small-scale riffs on traditional Christmas-time theatrical fare, with each Chirstmas season bringing yet another variation on the theme. Last year it was the superb and superbly funny "The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge" and I didn't they'd be able to top it. But top it they did. The new show plays cleverly on the time-honored tradition, observed by many regional the "A Christmas Carol" year after year. The theaters have their reasons ("We're going broke putting on Shakespeare.") and so do the actors ("I'm only doing it for the insurance."). But enough is enough and tthe three actors in what starts out as a pared-down version of the Dickens classic stage a mutiny and, in an effort to breathe new life into an old tradition, attempt to tell, yes, "hristmas Story Ever Told" in the space of 90 minutes. The plot, if such it can be called, defies summary, but it casts it's net far and wide, wide enough to pay passing homage to Channukah ("It bears similarities to other Jewish festivals: They tried to kill us. We survived. Let's eat!") and Kwanzaa ("The best part of Kwanzaa is that you'll never see a special called 'A Very Brady Kwanzaa'.") Along the way, we are provided with factoids about Christmas traditions in far off lands, some of which are factual, some of which are fanciful, and all of which are bizarre. But the major focus is on capsule retellings of famous Christmas tales, like Rudolph the Red-Nosed reindeer. Unfortunately, we learn that Rudolph is still protected by copyright, so we are treated to a "non-indictable" tale of Gustav the Green-Nosed Rein-Goat, who teams up with a misfit elf who wants to get out of the toy business and become a dentist. The Grinch is there, too, and the actual Christmas story makes a brief appearance in an unwonted quiet moment that is surprisingly touching. By the intermission the set is a disaster area and the cast sends us out into the lobby to observe yet another Christmas tradition -- buying stuff. The second act is somewhat more coherent than the first because the one hold out in the cast has been promised that they will do "A Christmas Carol" after all. But it seems they've overlooked "It's a Beautiful Life," so Marley morphs into Clarence, Angel Third Class, and the show once again spins giddily off the tracks. I can't pretend this is high art. Some of the humor is downright shameless, but that doesn't make any less funny. The crowd I saw it with leapt to its collective feet to give the show a well-deserved standing ovation. The show is the brainchild of Michael Carleton, John Alvarez, and Jim Fitzgerald who don't get a bio in the program, an oversight I correct with this link. The three actors, all OSF stalwarts, are Eric Hissom, Philip Nolen, and Timothy Williams, who do get bios, which are a hoot to read. All of them are very, very good, but I must reserve special mention for Nolen who is quite obviously in close touch with his inner child. Jim Helsinger, OSF's artistic director, has directed with aplomb and the Festival's costumers and prop department have outdone themselves. One word of warning: Don't sit in the first two rows, unless you don't mind being made sport of in front of a packed theater. Shout for Joy!
OSF's Every Christmas Story Ever Told is pure holiday gold!Talkin' Broadway.com
Review by Matthew McDermid The Orlando Shakespeare Festival has done it again folks, with yet another holiday offering that provides just enough "Bah, humbug!" before spreading a tremendous amount of Christmas cheer that is able to grasp even the stingiest of Scrooges and Grinchs. Last season's offering of The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge was a grand success, and with Every Christmas Story Ever Told - a piece penned in the same conceit as plays such as The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) and the other Abridged plays - OSF seems once again destined for holiday gold. Written by Michael Carleton, John Alvarez, and Jim Fitzgerald, Every Christmas Story Ever Told starts off with the actors attempting to seriously perform the obligatory production of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Two members of the troupe are tired of performing the classic and want to try to take Christmas to the extreme, and infect holiday spirit through the presentation of, yep, you guessed it, every Christmas story ever told. And so, we get the Grinch, we get comic bits of history about the way the holiday is celebrated in various countries around the world, we get "Gustav the Green-nosed Reingoat" because copyrights keep our merry players from doing it as "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer," and in act two, a hilarious conglomeration of A Christmas Carol and It's A Wonderful Life (which somehow they forgot to do in the first act). However, it is the brilliance of the trio of actors onstage that make what could be a rather lame attempt at holiday humor (one Natalie Wood joke could easily be a groaner, but not in the hands of a master) light, frothy, and never overbearing. Eric Hissom, Timothy Williams, and Philip Nolen have long been regarded as some of Central Florida's best actors, and in this production it is very easy to see why. Hissom is delightful as the stereotypical Scrooge, and later showcases his comic expertise as the Grinch, Hermey (the elf who wants to be a dentist), and especially in his Scrooge/George Bailey combination. Williams is hilarious in his many roles, including a perfect Ed Wynn impersonation as Charlie-in-the-Box, and especially recreating his Ghost of Christmas Future from last season in a tremendously funny (and unexpected) game of charades. However, Philip Nolen, in a grand departure from his portrayal of Scrooge last season, is perhaps the best part of the evening's festivities, providing a great naivete and gentleness to every character he brings, including Gustav, Linus of Peanuts fame, and nearly all the principal players of It's A Wonderful Life. Nolen's rendition of the famous "True Meaning of Christmas" monologue from A Charlie Brown Christmas is plaintive in its delivery and beautiful in its honesty. Mr. Nolen is able to bring a wonderful wide-eyed appeal to the proceedings, and it is he who is most successful at promoting the Christmas spirit. All three performers are directed with a light and cheesy hand by OSF artistic director Jim Helsinger (who, despite what his own program bio states, is more than capable of directing more serious fare), and they play on a wonderful unit set designed by Bob Philips. Eric Haugen's lighting design never over-complicates matters, and Kristina Tollefson's costume designs are clever and well executed, while Britt Sandusky's sound design is exceptional and humorous. So, even if you have missed some of this year's holiday specials when they have been shown on TV this season, chances are you'll be able to catch them - well, at least a glimmer of them, including all of the requisite charm fused with lots of heartfelt humor - at OSF's production of Every Christmas Story Ever Told, playing in the Margeson Theatre at the John and Rita Lowndes Shakespeare Center in Loch Haven Park through December 24th. For ticket information, visit www.shakespearefest.org, or contact the box office at (407) 447-1700, ext. 1. |
