Playwrights: Peter Gwinn and Bobby Mort. At: Goodman Theatre Owen Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St. Tickets: 312-443-3800 or www.goodmantheatre.org; $10-$61. Runs through Dec. 27
The Second City sure gets around collaborating with other Chicago arts institutions. Past Second City comedy show creations with the Lyric Opera of Chicago and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago were artistic and audience successes, and you can certainly add the current Goodman Theatre collaboration, Twist Your Dickens, to the list.
A delicious spoof of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Twist Your Dickens is back for its second year with a shortened title ( "Or Scrooge You!" was dropped off ). Also returning as the money-grubbing and bad-tempered Ebenezer Scrooge is Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble member Francis Guinan, showing off a wonderful flair for comedy and improvisation.
Twist Your Dickens authors Peter Gwinn and Bobby Mort ( formerly of The Colbert Report ) follow the basic plot structure of A Christmas Carol, but they also allow for hilarious tangents from way out of left field. Literary Dickens fans will delight at how his other characters like Oliver Twist and Martin Chuzzlewit get bizarrely incorporated into the mix.
There's also plenty of fun with pop cultural digressions that mock other holiday favorites. There's a more inclusive reexamination of A Charlie Brown Christmas and a sarcastic look at saviors for the denizens of the Island of Misfit Toys in the Rankin/Bass TV special Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer. Leah Piehl's spot-on costumes for these scenes are amazing additions to the work of credited costume designer Rachel Lambert.
What sticks out like a sore thumb is a sketch involving a Christmas album recording session with a boozy chanteuse. It may allow for an amazing Christmas song cooked up on the spot by comic spitfire Beth Melewski, but the sketch isn't as cleverly integrated into the show as it could be.
Other audience interaction moments allow for great comedy potential. Be sure to write down a personal sin before the show for actor Peter Gwinn to read out, and be ready to shout out ideas for actress Danielle Pinnock at a crucially dramatic point in the show.
More solid comic play come from the likes of Sue Salvi and her slow-moving Tiny Tim, Tim Sniffen as the resentful Bob Cratchit and especially Travis Turner as an energetic 1980s throwback Ghost of Christmas Past. Director Matt Hovde masterfully oversees all the joyous lunacy of Twist Your Dickens, while designers like Jesse Klug on lights and Tom Buderwitz on sets both perfectly frame the silly situations.
Whether Twist Your Dickens morphs into a perennial holiday favorite remains to be seen. At least you can confidently go knowing that reinvention has been built into the overall structure of Twist Your Dickens, and that every performance has the potential to be funnier than the previous one.