Marionettes take on Dickens’ classic
A Christmas Carol adaptation includes roles for popular puppet characters
Ronnie Burkett and his marionettes are no strangers to Vancouver. But with his latest show, the city is getting an exclusive.
Little Dickens: The Daisy Theatre Presents A Christmas Carol was created for its upcoming December run at the Cultch. The show is the usual Daisy Theatre mix of music, burlesque, audience participation and improvisation, but with a holiday twist.
“In the Daisy tradition, it’s not scripted,” the Alberta-born-andraised Burkett said. “It’s a vaudeville version of A Christmas Carol with the Daisy characters. It’s pretty loose and ridiculous.”
Burkett’s last four Daisy Theatre shows sold out their runs at the Cultch. Little Dickens is the first show that the puppeteer has created especially for the venue.
The riff on A Christmas Carol features Burkett’s most popular characters in the iconic roles of the Dickens classic, including aging showgirl Esmé Massengill as Scrooge and the fairy-child Schnitzel as Tiny Tim.
For the show, Burkett and his team have built new versions of the audience favourites. These include two Esmé-as-Scrooges, as well as younger versions of the character: child star Esmé and black-andwhite-film-star Esmé.
“I’ve always wanted to do this one thing, and you can do it better with puppets than with actors,” Burkett said. “Black-and-whitefilm-star Esmé is all in grey scale. You see a black and white puppet onstage, which is perfect for her. It’s bizarre and freakish but also interesting.”
Other returning characters include down-home Albertan Mrs. Edna Rural, who hosts an audience singalong while wearing a Christmas tree outfit that lights up, and stripper Dolly Wiggler, with a new four-piece costume to remove.
“It became a bigger deal than I planned it to be,” Burkett said. “That’s how we spent our summer, building a Christmas show.”
As with all Daisy shows, Little Dickens is a musical. The songs are standards arranged by John Alcorn.
It became a bigger deal than I planned it to be. That’s how we spent our summer, building a Christmas show.
“We went through the format, and decided where we wanted to have a song that’s part of the action, and where we wanted to have a song that’s like an entr’acte, between scenes. We’ve slotted songs both in the action and outside of it, to keep that sense of vaudeville.”
Although an avowed fan of TCM and Old Hollywood, Burkett relied on Dickens’ original text rather than drawing on elements of classic movie versions.
“There are certain lines that people expect to hear. But I’m not assuming people are a bunch of literary Nazis who are going to hold me to the story verbatim. I think people know the story in general.”
Burkett wanted to keep the party thrown by Fezziwig, “which for me is always the high point.” Daisy Theatre drag queen Miss Deena Doya is Fezziwig, a fair-minded businessman and the antithesis of Scrooge.
“For Marley, I thought long and hard who could be his ghost. I realized it’s this little character in a brown suit who used to be Esme’s agent. So it all fell into place.”
Likewise, the Toronto-based Burkett has fallen into place at the Cultch. In a career that finds him still playing to new audiences in new venues, the East Van theatre is a home away from home.
“It’s rare for a touring entity, a moving target, to feel you have a home base,” he said. “I think of it as a home theatre on the other side of the country. It’s very familiar and easy to be there. Plus, it’s not a blizzard over there. Bring on the rain. I can handle it.”