Columnist Susan Snyder: Taking a new twist on Dickens

Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2000 | 9:32 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

The Center Stage Inc. production of Charles Dickens' classic "A Christmas Carol" won't be the most traditional version people have seen.

But it may be one of the funniest.

"Our hallmark is provocative theater," Lenore Andrea Simon, who plays Ebenezer Scrooge, said.

And from title to curtain calls, "A Very Gay Christmas Carol" promises to be just that.

The Dickens spoof was written by Las Vegas resident Lynette Elliott. It is an irreverent tale in which Scrooge not only is a miser but a bigot who must learn to get along with the gays and lesbians around him.

Simon says the music is funny, and the drag queens are funny, and the part of the reader, played by former Nevada Sen. Lori Lipman Brown, will have people rolling in the aisles.

"This provides another point of view," said Simon, co-founder of the Center Stage Inc. "This is a safe way -- the perfect medium, really -- to explore contemporary, provocative issues."

Simon and the play's director, Alana Brown, formed their theater company six years ago in Monterey, Calif. Their first play, "The Last Summer in Bluefish Cove," was about a group of women who shared a joint vacation in the same spot each year. Only this time, one of them was dying of uterine cancer.

"It was sort of a lesbian 'Big Chill,' " Simon said.

In 1996 Brown accepted a lucrative position as legal administrator for a large insurance defense firm in Las Vegas. So she and Simon moved here and looked for opportunities to continue producing theater.

It took three years, a name change and nonprofit incorporation, but they turned Woof! Productions into the Center Stage Inc. They now draw financial support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Nevada Arts Council.

They re-created "The Last Summer in Bluefish Cove" for their first Las Vegas production in September 1999. This year they have staged "The Second Coming of Joan of Arc," and "A Hidden Agender," a play that examined the difficulties of being transsexual.

Several of the cast members were transsexuals, providing even cast members with a glimpse into a life that is often painful and difficult.

"It was quite an interesting, eye-opening experience," she said. "I used to think the Native Americans were at the bottom of the (societal) ladder, but transsexuals are. So many end up killing themselves."

"A Gay Christmas Carol" hits the other end of the emotional spectrum, using humor to explore bigotry.

Performances are at the Whitney Library Theater, 5175 E. Tropicana Ave., at 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday this week, and 8 p.m. Dec. 21, 22 and 23. Matinees are at 2 p.m. Sunday and Dec. 24. Tickets for people ages 60 and older are $8. All other seats are $12. Call 396-7422 or 737-7780. Or order them from boxoffice@thecenterstageinc.com.

The production is not recommended for people younger than 17.

"It's deliberately camp," Simon said. "Hopefully it will make people laugh."

In future productions Simon hopes to explore such topics as race relations, religious freedom and neo-Nazism.

"This stuff is really controversial," Simon said. "Unfortunately, we still have a lot to talk about. That's what we're all about."