It's Christmas tradition with a twist

By Don Shirley

Dec. 14, 2005 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

Riding the New York subway last June, Rob Elk was startled when a man approached him and asked if a little play Elk co-wrote, “Bob’s Holiday Office Party,” would again appear in L.A. during the Christmas season.

The man, Elk soon realized, was Don Took. Took is an avid fan of “Bob’s,” a comedy about a boozy Christmas party set in an insurance office in a small town in Iowa -- now in its 10th annual production.

“Bob’s” is hardly Took’s sole interest in end-of-the-year theater traditions. He has often been an actor in the Southland theater scene’s most established and professional holiday show, “A Christmas Carol” at South Coast Repertory.

Took discovered “Bob’s” during one of the rare years when he wasn’t in “Christmas Carol” -- he was recovering from surgery.

“I was transfixed” by “Bob’s,” he recalls. Took told his future wife, “This is going to be our holiday tradition.”

And it has become just that. Took manages to see “Bob’s” every year, even if he has to leave South Coast in Costa Mesa at 6 p.m. after the Sunday “Carol” matinee to get to the tiny Third Stage in Burbank, the current home of “Bob’s,” in time for the 7 p.m. show -- a journey he made once again last Sunday. Took has also introduced “Bob’s” to some of his fellow South Coast “Christmas Carol” cast members.

Took compares his obsession with “Bob’s” to the feelings of many British theatergoers about the free-wheeling comic pantomimes that they see during the holiday season. While South Coast’s “Christmas Carol” is “a wonderful bells-and-whistles holiday show,” he says, “Bob’s,” by contrast, “is a wonderful, over-the-top, politically incorrect holiday show.”

It’s not the only offbeat production that keeps returning year after year. Southland audiences have long been able to supplement such mainstream traditions as “The Glory of Christmas” at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” at the Old Globe in San Diego with rowdier offerings such as the Troubadour Theater Company’s series of pop music spoofs, including this year’s “Little Drummer Bowie,” at the Falcon Theatre in Burbank, or the Evidence Room’s series of holiday extravaganzas based on the visual motif of the 99 Cents Only Stores.

“A Christmas Carol” itself is presented in many different flavors. For the last three years, International City Theatre in Long Beach has used Doris Baizley’s adaptation, in which a circus troupe tells the Dickens story with stunts and puppetry.

Or consider “A Mulholland Christmas Carol,” a musical now in its fourth year at Theatre of Note in Hollywood. Scrooge in this variant on the Dickens classic is William Mulholland, the water baron from a century ago. He built an aqueduct to import water to Los Angeles, but his project was tarred by accusations that it despoiled the fertile Owens Valley and by the deadly 1928 collapse of the St. Francis Dam north of L.A.

In “A Mulholland Christmas Carol,” Owens Valley residents correspond to Dickens’ London poor, and the dam collapse is part of Mulholland’s vision of what might happen in the future if he doesn’t change his ways.

This year, the production played two shows in the Owens Valley before opening at the 49-seat Theatre of Note, where the show’s writer, Bill Robens, says, “We’re selling out pretty easily.”

Robens had become interested in the Owens Valley story as a child, when he accompanied his civil engineer father through the valley on ski trips to Mammoth. As an adult, Robens considered trying to write a musical from “Cadillac Desert,” a book and movie about the same subject, but then it occurred to him that “Mulholland’s brusque personality seemed to fit that of Scrooge.”

Soon thereafter, Theatre of Note started looking for a holiday show. The company “does some daring, challenging shows that don’t necessarily ask for repeated viewings,” Robens says. His musical comedy was seen as a way to attract returning audiences without sacrificing the company’s edgy iconoclasm.

Donna Luengo has seen “Mulholland” every year. Two years ago, she brought a group of more than 30, and a dozen of them plan to attend again on this year’s closing night.

“It’s so clever, and it seems different every year,” Luengo says. “It’s different even depending on what night you see it and the energy of the audience. It’s fascinating.”

Not that “Mulholland” or any other annual holiday show necessarily becomes a cash cow for a struggling theater company. “Mulholland” co-producer Lynn Odell says the show breaks even. However, because it annually reopens before a calendar year has passed, it’s defined as an ongoing show by Actors’ Equity, which means that payments to the 22-member cast have to rise every year. Next year, depending on what happens in Equity deliberations, the production might have to start using a regular Equity contract, which would at least triple its cost. The company is looking for a larger theater for “Mulholland” to sell more tickets.

“If money were the only motive” for International City Theatre’s “A Christmas Carol,” says the theater’s artistic director-producer Shashin Desai, “I would have dumped it.” Of course the primary message of “A Christmas Carol” (ICT’s version closed Sunday) is that money shouldn’t be someone’s only motive. Besides, Desai says, “A Christmas Carol” attracts new audiences, who often bring children. If it provides the first theater experience for even 10 children, Desai says, “all the money we lose is OK.”

“Bob’s Holiday Office Party” -- which is definitely not for children -- is starting to make a little money, says Elk, but its bottom line is still recovering from an expensive decision to experiment with using a live band during the production’s early years.

Elk also notes that doing the show means “the stress of the holiday season starts a lot earlier -- in September.”

So why do it? “Bob’s” co-writer and cast member Joe Keyes -- who says he gets depressed this time of year -- says the chance “to vicariously debauch for an hour and a half wards off the blues. You can’t be immersed in depression when you’re laughing.”

Holiday plays

What: “Bob’s Holiday Office Party”

Where: Third Stage, 2811 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank

When: 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 10 p.m. Saturday

Ends: Saturday

Price: $15 and $20

Contact: (818) 842-4755; www.bobsofficeparty.com

Also

What: “A Mulholland Christmas Carol”

Where: Theatre of Note, 1517 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood

When: 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday

Ends: Saturday