Get your Dickens in a twist one more time

'A Christmas Carol' meets 21st-century improv at Portland Center Stage

Holidays are a time for family and good feelings and shopping and revelry. With Portland Center Stage’s third year of “A Christmas Carol: Twist Your Dickens,” it’s a bow toward the irreverent and a salute to nontraditional fun.

It’s a mash-up of the Charles Dickens classic with improv bits based on audience participation and modern-day spin of current events and culture, with humorous and, ahem, twisted dialogue meant to not rattle the cages of traditionalists but to embrace the enjoyment of us living in the 21st century.

After all, it’s not like they’re spoofing Santa Claus or Jesus, which would be sacrilege. It’s Ebenezer Scrooge, for badness’ sake. He’s fair game.

“You can mess with tradition a little bit here,” says Chantal DeGroat, one of a handful of local actors who have combined with talents from The Second City comedy club and celebrity guests on “Twist Your Dickens,” which stages Dec. 9 to 31 at Portland Center Stage’s Gerding Theatre. Rehearsals start next week (see www.pcs.org for more).

“The audience comes in knowing that it’s going to be a comedy, and expect us to pick up on the nuances and the big issues that we feel differently about than people in the 1920s and ‘30s, or even ‘60s and ‘70s. When you look back at the traditional stories and movies, you think, ‘Wow, that’s totally wrong and highly offensive and I still feel nostalgic.’ You feel nostalgic but still laugh at yourself.”

DeGroat plays Belle, Scrooge’s love interest in “A Christmas Carol,” whom he revisits with the help of the Ghost of Christmas Past. Oh, she also plays Tiny Tim, Little Orphan Annie and Sally from Charlie Brown’s Peanuts gang. Yeah, the play goes in some other directions.

Meanwhile, fellow local actor Lauren Modica plays Mrs. Cratchit, Bob Cratchit’s wife, as well as Dorothy from “Wizard of Oz” and Lucy from the Peanuts gang, among others.

“Twist Your Dickens” can get pretty different. It’s written by Peter Gwinn and Bobby Mort, award-winning writers of “The Colbert Report” (Stephen Colbert is a Second City alum), and PCS became the first regional theater company to get the rights to stage it two years ago.

“It’s really great, because you’ve got this storyline and characters and Scrooge and Cratchits and Ghost and Tiny Tim,” Modica says. “You also

got these loosely linked topical improv scenes that are super fast and quick. If you like sketch comedy, Second City or even ‘SNL’ (‘Saturday Night Live’), you’ll recognize them. You want to get in and get out. We’ve got characters that range from the Peanuts gang to Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift, and topical references.

“Everyone’s goal is to keep it as modern and topical as possible, but you also got early 1900s/late 1800s dressed up, the Cratchits and Scrooge with his tails and high fancy duds.”

Indeed, Modica says it’s been fun working on the Cratchits’ characters, livening them up and making them sassy and bringing out their hidden sides.

“Mrs. Cratchit, you never thought of her as a murderous and resentful woman — ‘If (Bob) would just stand up and get more coals for the fire, I wouldn’t have to plot his boss’ murder,’” Modica says, recounting a scene. “We’ve had fun sort of psychoanalyzing the Cratchits’ marriage, which makes it fun for us, coming up with these wild backstories. What she always wished she could do was be a seamstress; instead they have 15 children and he brings home a stack of celery and a carrot and says, ‘Here you go.’”

With the Tiny Tim character, DeGroat says while he is the epitome of malnourishment and poverty and Scrooge is such an evil man for depriving the Cratchit family, “I was trying to figure out what makes him funny,” she says. “He’s a sick child, but he’s so happy. I love him for that.”

With Belle, DeGroat adds, “she’s kind of like a modern woman and gets to tell Scrooge off.”

So goes much of “Twist Your Dickens,” which also features local actors Sam Dinkowitz, Nicholas Kessler and John San Nicolas, all playing a variety of roles, and Second City’s Ron West (director), Craig Cackowski (Scrooge) and Jaime Moyer (The Ghost of Christmas Present and others).

DeGroat says Cackowski makes the Scrooge character “almost lovable.” Cackowski has a big, booming voice and DeGroat and her boyfriend do impressions of him for fun.

“He’s a buffoon of Scrooge, instead of this evil man,” she says. “A Scrooge who at times is very stupid. But, he has these huge curls and blue eyes, and has these foibles and thoughts. He says all these horrible things that ‘the man’ says today, keeping the (little) man down. But it’s the brilliance that Craig has to draw you in. He’s the most holistic Scrooge, because it’s like you’re healing; it’s the healing quality of laughter.”