| Ondine and Jacque Lynn Colton Photo by Billy Name |
| Donald L. Brooks as Marley and Ondine as Scrooge in Soren Agenoux' "Chas. Dickens' Christmas Carol" at the Caffe Cino, December, 1966, photo by Conrad Ward |
| Flyer designed by Charles Stanley |
Michael Smith's comments on the production:
“CHAS. DICKENS’S CHRISTMAS CAROL”
Caffè Cino, New York, Christmas 1966
Søren’s play was a delirious pastiche of Walt Disney’s Scrooge McDuck comics, received impressions of the Dickens story, found language, and surrealistic amphetamine
raving. I took it to be brilliant as artifact if not art, but what’s the difference? Ondine was stunning as Scrooge, his own venomous persona merging with the character’s.
Charles Stanley, gaunt and saturnine, played Tiny Tim on his knees, with a half-size crutch. Soren’s boyfriend Arnold Horton brought Bob Cratchitt a lingering embattled
wholesomeness, and Søren played Mrs. Cratchitt in mob cap and gingham, looking out from this getup very much his own weird self. Bob Patrick played Jacob Marley*.
Jaque Lynn Colton, inspired by two months in Hostelbro working with Barba, embodied the Ghost of Christmas Past, with a crown of candles burning on her head.
Squeezing such a wide-ranging play into the Cino’s tiny performance zone, even with Johnny Dodd’s imaginative lighting, obviously called for something something very
different from realism. At one point Cardinal Spellman took Scrooge for a helicopter tour of the Dismal Swamp : Vietnam. Not everyone could buy the feverishly cool
style I came up with, but I have always felt proud of this production, which crystallized a rhapsodic if unsustainable cultural moment.
There were a lot of drugs around, principally speed in various forms, and pot, and psychedelics. Ondine was a notorious speed freak, and Søren had seduced me into
relying on amphetamines, which was thrilling for a while but ultimately catastrophic. This “Christmas Carol” has been seen as the beginning of the end of the Caffè
Cino: Joe Cino was increasingly undone in the following months and committed suicide in the cafe on March 30, 1967. I had brought these people to the cafe, which was
the only place available to do work anything like this; indeed the availability of the cafe and Joe Cino’s welcome and support had brought the play into being. My
reviews in The Voice, beginning in 1962-63 when I fell for Johnny Dodd, then the waiter, helped make the Caffè Cino such a hotbed of creativity, launching Off-Off-
Broadway. So it was ironic that, as an unintended consequence of “Chas. Dickens’s Christmas Carol,” I killed Joe Cino.
The play was published in my anthology “The Best of Off-Off-Broadway” (E. P. Dutton, 1969).
* note by Donald L. Brooks -- I originated the role of Marley and left the production after the first week for many of the reasons Michael Smith has noted above.
Caffè Cino, New York, Christmas 1966
Søren’s play was a delirious pastiche of Walt Disney’s Scrooge McDuck comics, received impressions of the Dickens story, found language, and surrealistic amphetamine
raving. I took it to be brilliant as artifact if not art, but what’s the difference? Ondine was stunning as Scrooge, his own venomous persona merging with the character’s.
Charles Stanley, gaunt and saturnine, played Tiny Tim on his knees, with a half-size crutch. Soren’s boyfriend Arnold Horton brought Bob Cratchitt a lingering embattled
wholesomeness, and Søren played Mrs. Cratchitt in mob cap and gingham, looking out from this getup very much his own weird self. Bob Patrick played Jacob Marley*.
Jaque Lynn Colton, inspired by two months in Hostelbro working with Barba, embodied the Ghost of Christmas Past, with a crown of candles burning on her head.
Squeezing such a wide-ranging play into the Cino’s tiny performance zone, even with Johnny Dodd’s imaginative lighting, obviously called for something something very
different from realism. At one point Cardinal Spellman took Scrooge for a helicopter tour of the Dismal Swamp : Vietnam. Not everyone could buy the feverishly cool
style I came up with, but I have always felt proud of this production, which crystallized a rhapsodic if unsustainable cultural moment.
There were a lot of drugs around, principally speed in various forms, and pot, and psychedelics. Ondine was a notorious speed freak, and Søren had seduced me into
relying on amphetamines, which was thrilling for a while but ultimately catastrophic. This “Christmas Carol” has been seen as the beginning of the end of the Caffè
Cino: Joe Cino was increasingly undone in the following months and committed suicide in the cafe on March 30, 1967. I had brought these people to the cafe, which was
the only place available to do work anything like this; indeed the availability of the cafe and Joe Cino’s welcome and support had brought the play into being. My
reviews in The Voice, beginning in 1962-63 when I fell for Johnny Dodd, then the waiter, helped make the Caffè Cino such a hotbed of creativity, launching Off-Off-
Broadway. So it was ironic that, as an unintended consequence of “Chas. Dickens’s Christmas Carol,” I killed Joe Cino.
The play was published in my anthology “The Best of Off-Off-Broadway” (E. P. Dutton, 1969).
* note by Donald L. Brooks -- I originated the role of Marley and left the production after the first week for many of the reasons Michael Smith has noted above.
| Soren Agenoux as Mrs. Cratchitt, with the director, Michael Smith (photo: Billy Name) |
