A Christmas Twist
Play Description
A very funny satire of Dickensian excesses about Christmas and poor people and the rich people who don't care about them … A CHRISTMAS TWIST is bursting with humor that makes a mockery of Christmas sentimentality. Perfect theatre for the holiday season.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (2 female, 5 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
- Productions
Press Quotes
“TWIST blends two works by its victim author; grafted onto the familiar parable of Ebenezer and his spirits are guest villains Fagin and Mr Bumble from Oliver Twist. The title character is twentysomething Tiny Twist, a gangly orphan waif who hates gruel (the Cratchits’ favorite dish) and whose crutch keeps getting stuck in cracks. Bumble and Fagin mercilessly exploit Twist (despite the lad’s klutziness as a pickpocket) until Bob Cratchit impulsively adopts the tall tot. The villains scheme to get Twist back, but in the mock-violent conclusion a redeemed Scrooge exposes their foul plot … abounds with Illegitimate irreverence, like a Ghost of Christmas Past who grouses about always having to fly from one stranger’s dreary memory to the next. Along with the regulation chains worn by Marley’s ghost are some keepsake accessories he added for texture. The Cratchits’ idea of forced merriment is to play ‘blind man’s bluff’ with a real blind girl and to share ghoulish holiday wishes. The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come uses a step stool to tower over Scrooge and communicates entirely through charades … [a] good night of wicked travesty … inspired humbug.” —Lawrence Bommer, The Chicago Tribune
Author(s)
Doug ArmstrongDoug Armstrong was a member of Chicago's Illegitimate Players.
- Keith Cooper
Keith Cooper was a member of Chicago's Illegitimate Players.
- The Illegitimate Players
From the mid-eighties to the mid-nineties, a small group of Chicago Improvisational actors formed a cabaret troupe, forged from the classes of The Second City and invaded a tiny pub on Fullerton Avenue called The Roxy. The result was a decade long love affair with critics and audiences alike. From the very first musical-comedy revue, NEAR NORTHSIDE STORY, the Illegitimate Players proved their staying power. After convincing The Roxy owners to share their back room, converting it into a black box theater, their first revue ran for over a year under the direction of Second City's own Don DePollo. The consistent sell-out audiences prompted Group W Cable to tape the revue for Midwest television broadcast. This endeavor wrangled a Chicago Emmy Award. This taste for telecast was soon followed by video pieces for Chicago WTTW's Image Union program. Also performing semi-regularly on radio's Q101. And thus it had begun. NEAR NORTHSIDE STORY was answered by two other well received revues, OUT ON A WHIM and ILLEGITIMATE PLAYERS LIVE. But already the "IllGits" were branching out. To better finance their endeavors, they incorporated as "The Comedy Option" to write, video, and perform for corporation's rollout and sales meetings. They became regular client's for many Fortune 500 corporations, including First Chicago Bank, Abbot Labs, Boston Mass Mutual ... Their Emmy award brought Group W Cable back to pitch a series for the tri-state area. That offer soon became The Illegitimate Players on TV. A 26-week sketch comedy lambasting the television industry. Along with the live revue, the television show, and the corporate shows, they took on weekly hosting at Chicago's "Catch a Rising Star" downtown. The Illegitimate Players started working in longer form pieces and soon abandoned revue comedy to embark on a string of literary parodies for the legitimate stage. From their first full-length play THE GLASS MENDACITY, it was clear that critics liked what they saw. Their works were published first by Chicago Plays Inc. and currently by Broadway Publishing Inc. These stories live on in productions all over the country and the UK.
- Maureen Morley
Maureen Morley was a member of Chicago's Illegitimate Players.
Book Information
| Publisher | BPPI |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 6/1/2000 |
| Pages | 80 |
| ISBN | 9780881451764 |
Special Notes
If original stage producers credits appear in bold below, all licensees are required to include them in the following form on the title page in all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play and in all advertising in which the full cast appears in size of type not less than ten percent (10%) of the size of the title of the Play:
In addition, the following must appear within all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play:
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypub.com
Upcoming and Recent Productions
Nonprofessional
Related Plays
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
What if Blanche Dubois didn’t go crazy? Or the Three Sisters actually made it to Moscow? When he discovers he’s fictitious, a never-seen character in an Oscar Wilde play, Bunbury joins forces with Rosaline, Romeo’s never-seen obsession from ROMEO AND JULIET. Together they infiltrate and alter classic literature, including giving ROMEO AND JULIET a happy ending.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (3 female, 5 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$19.95
Play Description
A murder-mystery serial-comedy with gratuitous sex and violence and a cliffhanger ending every 10 minutes. Larry Fingers and his cigar-chomping, gun-toting protégé Spike are about to hit the big-time. But will their budding music career survive the spectre of scandal raised by the Lycanthrope from Larry’s occult past? Larry’s not saying. But hotel detective (and erotic novelist) Dick Piston means to find some answers. Even if he has to write it himself.
Production Info
Cast: 15 total (5 female, 10 male)Full Length Comedy (about 210 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Burned-out actor Hugh Pendleton, not-so-fresh from playing Scrooge one too many times in the backwater community theatre where his once promising career has met its unglamorous end, is surprised to encounter three spirits of his own in this quirky and compelling ode to the holiday classic.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (1 female, 3 male, flexible casting, up to 17 actors)Full Length Comedy (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Lord Loveworthy has a problem. His only daughter is soon to be married. And the only way to pay for her wedding is to blackmail the vicar who’s seducing his wife. But how does a Victorian pornographer commit extortion, without inordinate discord, at tea?
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (3 female, 4 male)Full Length Comedy (about 120 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes
$0.00–$15.95
Play Description
Danger is Firesign's take on the hard-boiled detective character, with first-person narration and crazy adventures that often involve mistaken identity, and of course there's always a dangerous dame. The skits spoof the conventions of those old detective radio shows, right down to the special effects, the sponsors, the on-air host, the convoluted plots, and just about anything else that one might have heard on a classic serial.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (4 male)Short Comedy (about 40 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$25.00
Play Description
Welcome to the Annual Holiday Variety Show and Christmas Pageant at St. Everybody’s Non-Denominational Universalist Church, where all faiths are welcome because we’ll believe anything. But there’s a problem: none of the acts scheduled to perform have arrived, so three members are pressed into service to perform the entire Variety Show and Christmas Pageant by themselves. An irreverent yet heartwarming trip through the holidays, THE ULTIMATE CHRISTMAS SHOW (ABRIDGED) is festive, funny, physical, family fun as these Three Wise Guys send up and celebrate our favorite holiday traditions.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (3 male, as written; gender-diverse and/or expanded casts welcome)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
A laugh-out-loud parody par excellence of Shakespeare's tragedies. Wickedly whimsical, delightfully devious, with six blended tragedies, thirty-one parts, forty location changes and one enormous sword-swinging battle of twenty thousand men.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (2 female, 4 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
When the dead walk … you run! LIVING DEAD IN DENMARK is an action-adventure/horror sequel to William Shakespeare’s HAMLET. Set five years after the events of the original, the undead have risen to power and are trying to take over the world, led by the zombie lord and true king of Denmark. Fortinbras, assembling a formidable opposition, has resurrected the corpses of some of the greatest women that Shakespeare had to offer: Lady Macbeth, Juliet, and the very angry Ophelia. A clash of the undead titans ensues!
Production Info
Cast: 11 total (6 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 95 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$11.95–$15.00
Play Description
In the words of The Chicago Reader, “The witty script supplies the one thing Steinbeck lacked: a sense of humor! … OF GRAPES AND NUTS dogs its original like a comic bloodhound.” Chicago’s WBBM Radio said “I have a feeling that were he alive today, John Steinbeck would be chuckling more than just a little … OF GRAPES AND NUTS scoots along, as Tom Joad might say, like a 12-toed man in a foot race.”
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (2 female, 4 male)Full Length Comedy (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00
Play Description
Tennessee Williams gets the illegitimate treatment as THE GLASS MENDACITY hilariously parodies his work in this “magnolia operetta.”
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (3 female, 3 male)Full Length Comedy (about 85 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Pulled from the stomach of a whale, an American whaler is bleached blind and becomes a modern Tiresias in the court of Louis XVI. He seduces Marie Antoinette and sets the king on a path to destroy France and ultimately humankind. A tragicomedy in rhymed couplets.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (3 female, 7 male)Full Length Comedy (about 140 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$15.00–$100.00
Play Description
In Eric Overmyer's hilarious send-up of private-eye pulp fiction, Shrimp Bucket and his brother, Gut, are stealing the sexy Dolores Con Leche's dreams. It's Taxi's task to find out why. From the ubiquitous fog to the cheap bedrooms at Heartbreak Hotel to Con Leche's legs, which are described as “gams that could raise goose flesh on a tossed salad,” IN A PIG'S VALISE pokes fun at and pays homage to the hardboiled detective novels we all know and love.
Production Info
Cast: 9 total (3 female, 6 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes