A Klingon Christmas Carol Next Weekend

Get your tickets now for the latest Twin Cities Christmas tradition: the Klingon version of A Christmas Carol performed by St. Paul's Commedia Beauregard. I saw it last year, and it was wonderfully inventive.


Here, SQuja’ (Scrooge, at left), confronts Kahless Past (Christmas Past...done up as an “old style” Klingon).


There's lots of mock Klingon fighting, of course, and a narrator from the Vulcan Institute of Cultural Anthropology (plus a projection screen for the subtitles).

Theater reviewer Dominic Papatola did a nice write-up on the show in Saturday's Pioneer Press, including the news that Commedia Beauregard is going to be included in the extras of the upcoming Blu Ray disc of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. This time, they'll be doing a few scenes from the Klingon version of Hamlet.

Papatola quotes Commedia's artistic director Christopher Kidder: "I got an e-mail from Paramount about three weeks ago... And I delayed as long as I could responding, since I was positive it would be a cease-and-desist order telling us we couldn't do 'Klingon Christmas Carol.' " But "It turns out that we are in the unique position of having a crew of actors that can pronounce the stuff."

So a film crew is arriving soon to shoot the famous soliloquy and the grave diggers' scene, complete with a Vulcan skull for Yorick.