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When: Friday through Dec. 19. Showtimes: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 6 p.m. Sundays
Where: Blue Barn Theatre, 614 S. 11th St.
Tickets: $25 adults, $20 students and senior citizens
Information: 345-1576
The Blue Barn Theatre can't resist a raucous parody at Christmastime.
From “Reform School Timmy: An XXXmas Carol” (1996) to “The Santaland Diaries” (2001), from “Little Nelly's Naughty Noel” (2002) to “Poseidon: An Upside Down Musical” (2004), making fun of Christmas has become a seasonal tradition for the downtown theater.
This year it will be buff boys in reindeer antlers, a cross-dressing descendant of red-nosed Rudolph and a serial-killer Kris Kringle in “Silent Night of the Lambs.” The play superimposes a Christmas motif on the best-picture winner that starred Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins.
“Our patrons expect a Christmas show like this,” said artistic director Susan Clement-Toberer — one that contains extreme parody, outrageous humor, a bit of horror and scantily clad young men.
Besides, she said, it was an excuse to ask Blue Barn co-founder Hughston Walkinshaw to return and direct.
“‘Silence of the Lambs' is my all-time favorite,” said Walkinshaw, who now works with the Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre in Kansas City, Mo. “The audience will be surprised how cleverly the script takes these iconic film characters and superimposes Christmas figures on them.”
Randall Stevens plays Clarice the reindeer, the only girl FBI cadet among a hunky herd at the North Pole. To catch a serial murderer dubbed The Skinner, she needs the help of Santa, long jailed for the cannibalism of children.
Stevens, a Blue Barn associate artist, found the script online, performed by the same Chicago company that earlier did “Poseidon.”
Bill Hutson, a Creighton theater professor and award-winning local actor, leapt at the chance to play Anthony Hopkins' role.
“I was laughing all the way through the script,” Hutson said, “and I wanted to work with Hughston again.”
More than 50 roles will be played by a cast of 14 that includes five of Hutson's former students: Tom Neumann, Chad Singleton, Bill Grennan, Nick Hartnett and Mary Kelly, plus stage manager Patrick O'Malley.
Others in the cast: Shane Staiger, Bailey Carlson, Jeremy Earl, Jennifer McGill, Brandy Leggett-Petricka, Jason DeLong and Austin Learned.
Contact the writer:
444-1269, bob.fischbach@owh.com
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