Sh!t Actually & Sing-A-Long-A Muppet Christmas Carol, Camden People’s Theatre, London Review
Written by Greta for Theatre and Tonic
Have you yet to experience something, this festive season, to put you in a proper Christmassy mood? Sh!t Theatre has got you covered. Their two Christmas shows, pitting “the best Christmas film of all time” (The Muppet Christmas Carol) and “the worst Christmas film of all time” (Love Actually) against one another, are delightful and will make you feel giddy, fuzzy, and overall ready to face the beast that these holidays can be.
Smartly tackled as two separate shows, both films receive the “Sh!t Theatre treatment”, which apparently includes free goody bags, free booze, and guaranteed nudity. However, the kindness of the treatment is proportionate to the greatness of the show; while The Muppet Christmas Carol’s features are celebrated and its messages amplified, Love Actually is rightly exposed to vilifying (and hilarious) scrutiny.
Sing-A-Long-A Muppet Christmas Carol has a few tried and tested ingredients: an introduction to warm up the audience and establish the relaxed, community-rooted vibe of the evening; a drinking game (with shot glasses helpfully provided in the goody bag we are gifted as we take a seat); lyrics to the incredibly catchy tunes on screen; actions to perform when a particular event happens (the most popular being the prompt of gently encouraging Michael Caine as he acts, which was taken on board by the entire audience and provided a never-ending collective background commentary to the night). All in service of an incredibly popular movie that has come to assume a cultural significance far greater than anyone would have expected when it was first released. The result is what you expect: it feels like Christmas (ha-ha-ha). Everyone has their favourite bits, apparently, random lines that they know by heart and shout at the top of their lungs; everyone is eager to participate in what feels like a proper family celebration – but without all the passive-aggressiveness and the boredom. Everyone is encouraged to come as they are and leave their worries at the door as we sing together, react to each other’s takes, and imitate Michael Caine’s incredibly awkward arm positioning.
Sh!t Actually is a completely different type of show. Only brief clips of the original film are shown to make salient points – with the only exception being the incredibly famous Emma-Thompson-crying-to-Joni-Mitchell scene, which audiences have still not forgiven Alan Rickman for, which plays on a loop for the entire duration of the performance. Dissection, interpretation and critique of the source take chief priority, as Sh!t Theatre points out its absurd and fatal flaws and uses them as starting points to generate new material. There are songs, including a beautifully harmonised version of River, and a lot of unnecessary male nudity, cleverly counterbalancing the film’s own excessive, pointless – and kind of exhausting – spectacle of women’s naked bodies. There are sublime montages highlighting the ridiculousness of some of the original passages, a love letter of appreciation for sound editing, and insight into overlooked characters such as Kevin the Juggler. There is also an important acknowledgement: sometimes the best things are the ones we hate to love. Why do we make ourselves go through a watch this puzzlingly racist, infuriatingly fatphobic, and truly misogynistic wreck of a movie every Christmas? And why do we feel all warm and fuzzy inside afterwards?
The answer is in both shows: Christmas is about traditions, and those have the power to make us feel, miraculously, like we belong. But traditions are much more than doing the same things over and over – they bring us closer to the people we love through shared memories, interests, and even through shared hatred of horrendous Christmas movies we can’t help but watching together. Sh!t Theatre have their chill, festive atmosphere nailed, and proclaims “WE ARE YOUR NEW TRADITION. WE ARE YOUR WEIRD FAMILY”; go check out if that rings true for you too
★ ★ ★ ★
