‘A Christmas Carol’: It’s a weird, weird, weird weird world

If the Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre’s current production of “A Christmas Carol” were a movie instead of a stage musical, it’d quite likely have a long life as a cult movie. You know, the kind of movie that’s just so odd and peculiar that you can neither predict nor explain the strange twists it takes, nor the choices the director made — the type of movie you watch with friends and make witty comments about throughout.

The plot of the classic Dickens novel “A Christmas Carol” is well known: a miserly man named Ebenezer Scrooge is in love with money and hates the human race. He’s mean and cruel, completely lacking in any human warmth or kindness.

One Christmas Eve, the ghost of his old partner, Marley, appears, telling him that throughout the night he’ll be visited by three ghosts: Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Future.

These visitations cause Scrooge to have an epiphany, and he becomes a changed man.

This musical version at the Broadway Palm starts out conventionally enough — Victorian people in top hats and muttonchop sideburns, bonnets and banana curls. There are petticoats and topcoats and bows galore. (Costume designer John P. White outdoes himself with this production.)

And Jim France is one of the best Scrooges I’ve seen on stage. His “Bah humbugs” sound as if they come from the very core of his meanness and posses a ring of authenticity. It doesn’t come across as an archaic phrase an actor blindly parrots just because he knows his character has to say it.

(The entire show itself, unfortunately, is over amplified. When the cast sings as an ensemble, you don’t hear a pleasant, blended sound, nor a group singing in unison.)

Everything proceeds along as one would expect in 1843 London. Scrooge bah humbugs everyone who wishes him a Merry Christmas or asks for money for the poor.

He climbs into bed, and the ghost of Marley (Mark H. Richards) comes to haunt him.

When Marley’s just an image on a wall, he’s scary, possibly too scary for some children.

But when he appears in person, the musical suddenly turns into a comedy. Marley, dressed in white and wrapped in chains, looks as if he’s wandered in from the set of “Beetlejuice.” He has an overgrown Andy Warhol wig, and, like Flava Flav and his signature oversized timepiece neckwear, sports a large metal box as a necklace.

When his fellow ghosts, complete with a headless man, show up to help him perform “Link by Link,” they look like extras from the “Thriller” video. The actors camp it up, many of them playing catch with the head of the headless guy.

They look like zombies. Perhaps director Brian Enzman was playing tribute to movie director George Romero, who partially filmed “Night of the Living Dead” in downtown Fort Myers.

“And then,” my theater companion said, “It got weird.”

But in my opinion, the weirdness had already started.

The Ghost of Christmas Past (Alison Rose Munn) appears, dressed in white, with everglowing lights in her hairpiece. But she looks as if she’s spent too much time on the beach, or in a tanning salon, which seems very out of place in perpetually overcast Victorian England.

But things grow stranger. In Act II, the Ghost of Christmas Present shows up (Galloway Stevens). A robust man in long green velvet and white trim, he has dark curly hair that flowed down to this shoulders and looks as if he stepped out of “The Lord of the Rings.” Some women show up too, only to have their skirts ripped off, as they all proceed to sing “Abundance and Charity” and dance about. The Ghost of Christmas Present actually dances with an oversized candy cane as a cane. (No straw hat, though.)

The women, wearing red fishnet stockings and white heeled boots, look like Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.

At this point, I felt as if I were in an alternate universe, perhaps watching a production directed by Ed Woods or Ray Dennis Steckler. Or “A Christmas Carol” meets “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

I was ready for just about anything, and wondered if the Ghost of Christmas Future (Kristen Gehling) would make a grand entrance in a space suit. (She doesn’t. It

wasn’t that far in the future.)

Instead, she shows up in a fire-engine red leather outfit with a skimpy skirt that looks like shreds of cloth, and proceeds to dance ballet. She looks as if she’s escaped from Vegas.

This production of “A Christmas Carol” reminded me of those novels that have come out recently: “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” and “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.” Obviously, this musical is a mash-up of different genres.

I don’t know if that was the original writers’ intention (book by Mike Ockrent and Lynn Ahrens, music by Alan Menken and lyrics by Ms. Ahrens) or if this was Mr. Enzman’s direction.

There are a number of excellent singers in this production, including Melinda Vaggione as the younger Scrooge’s fiancé, Scott Moreau as Bob Cratchit, Michael Austin as young Ebenezer and Steven Mark Lasiter as young Marley. And a half dozen children to tug at the heart strings, especially Tiny Tim (played at alternating shows by Cody Vagle and Spenser Saso.)

Maybe it was all a bad dream, as Scrooge initially suspects. Maybe Scrooge liked to spike his snuff with something stronger and hallucinogenic.

I don’t know.

I’ve never heard the words “weird” and “different” used as much after a show as I did after this one.

I’m not quite sure what I saw. But I was grateful not to be subjected to another sappy, overly sentimental Christmas revue. And I was entertained.

If the Broadway Palm fixes itsmegaamplification problem, and maybe pushes the campiness/quirkiness quotient a little more (maybe go all out and add giant sea monsters who’ll wrap their tentacles around London in the background) it could very well have a cult hit on its hands for the holidays. 

If you go

>>What: “A Christmas Carol” >>When: through Dec. 26 >>Where: Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre,

1380 Colonial Blvd., Fort Myers >>Cost: $27 to $49 >>Info: 278-4422 or www.BroadwayPalm.com