Revamped ‘Twist Your Dickens’ as timely, zany as ever

Bah ha ha ha humbug!

Now in its third outing, “Twist Your Dickens,” The Second City’s lampoon of all things Christmas, features a revised book that keep things both topical and zany.

And that’s a very good thing. Last year’s show felt a bit tired and dated. Fortunately, the book, by “The Colbert Report” writers Peter Gwinn and Bobby Mort, has been overhauled, and the result is a fresh and bountiful feast of funny.

It is fitting that a show about a quartet of ghosts who show the penny-pinching miser Scrooge (a terrific Ron West, who also directs) would begin with a barber shop quartet of those ghosts setting the stage (including the obvious; the Charles Dickens classic remains popular fodder for theaters across the country less on the strength of its book and more on the fact that it is in the public domain and thus royalty-free).

Scrooge’s deceased business partner Jacob Marley (Joe Dempsey), still arrives with a crash of thunder and a cloud of hellfire smoke, but his chains now include misdeeds written on paper chains by the audience before the show. West and Dempsey riff on many of these revelations, mining them for appropriate comedy gold. And you have the added bonus of realizing the seemingly normal people in the audience around you might just be Scrooge-like (or worse; to the person who substituted cat food for pate at a party, I say shame on you!).

Interspersed between the “A Christmas Carol” send-up are satires of many other holiday classics including “It’s a Wonderful Life” (Dempsey nails Jimmy Stewart’s voice and mannerisms), “The Island of Misfit Toys” (who finally find happy homes courtesy of hipsters) and Linus’ overtly religious monologue from “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

The additional scenes add much-needed variety to the well-trodden event. The bulk of the show is still Scrooge’s journey to redemption, however. The Ghost of Christmas Past (Joel Boyd) and Ghost of Christmas Present (Carisa Barreca) carry much of their scenes (to be fair, there’s not much you can do with the mute Ghost of Christmas Future beyond a few sight gags).

Boyd’s Ghost of Christmas Past channels MC Hammer, complete with parachute pants, boom box and every bad ‘80s pop song you can think of. (If Scrooge should have to suffer in reliving his past, so should those of us who lived through that era.) A party scene at Fezziwig’s includes the dreaded office “White Elephant” gift exchange to great effect, as does the one in which Scrooge’s betrothed Belle reveals for whom she dumped him.

The break-out performance belongs to Barreca. Her Ghost of Christmas Present is a young, inebriated Cubs fan. Anyone who has ever been in Wrigleyville after the game will recognize who Barreca is playing. Her facial expressions and comedic timing hit the mark and her humor feels warm and less cynical. It’s the human equivalent of spiked eggnog – sweet and intoxicating.

Greg Matthew Anderson is appropriately put-upon as Cratchit. Katie Caussin and Sara Dell’Amico (as Mrs. Cratchit and Tiny Tim, respectively) are also amusing as they plot alternative methods of extracting revenge from Scrooge (hint: Hitchcock would be proud).

That’s not to say that “Twist” doesn’t go after some low-hanging fruit. In the dumpster fire of a year, one would anticipate a joke or two about Trump, and these jokes do come up in some rather unexpected scenes. One misfire is a skit about an amped-up version of “The Nutcracker.” Much like its namesake ballet, it goes on a bit too long.

The laughs are ample at this PG-13 send up of the Dickens’ classic.

Misha Davenport is a local freelance writer.