Margot is working the night shift at a fast food restaurant on Christmas Eve. She chooses to work it every year. She’s there all by herself, which is handy, because in short order, she’s visited by four spirits, the first — her friend Jackie — warning that there will be others to come on that very night.
If any of this sounds like the classic Dickens tale of A Christmas Carol now playing upstairs at the Alley Theatre, well it should. The Night Shift Before Christmas with four previews starting Thursday night before opening on Sunday night, takes elements of that story and transports them to a modern setting.
Briana J. Resa (American Mariachi) plays Margot in the one-act play written by Isaac Gómez and directed by KJ Sanchez that Alley Theatre commissioned and calls a world premiere. Resa plays all the characters, a chance to show her range as she journeys through the night. “Our central character is possessed. So she becomes different people throughout the show.”
“I get to dance. I get to sing. I get to do dialect work for all of these characters. That’s rare,” she says. “I’m a little crazy. This is my third undertaking of a one-woman show.”
There’s a live kitchen on stage with a hot grill, she says. “There are lots of bells and whistles, Something falls from the sky though I won’t say what. It’s a highly technical show with a lot of that kid of spark that audiences like to see around this time of year.”
Margot works in a mom and pop fast food restaurant in Texas, Resa says, adding, “It’s not based on any specific chain.” There will be call outs from the script that Houstonians will readily recognize, she says.
Working from a 70-page script, Resa says she got 40 pages of changes over the Thanksgiving holidays. ranging from a word on a page to more significant rewrites. “That’s the nature of a world premiere. My actor brain has to process that,” she says, laughing. The previews will give her additional time to work through her part, she says.
“This definitely is an adult-themed show [with] adult language in it., Resa says. “It’s going to have a lot of comedy and it’s got a lot of heart. The audience pulls for her in a different way than they do Scrooge. I think audiences can identify with Margot. They know someone whose like that. They know someone’s ’s stuck and that’s where Margot is. Margot is very stuck. The holidays are not the best time of year for everyone They’re hard for a lot of people. By the end we’re so hopeful that she is able to change — that we get to see her transform in front of us.
“I really believe in this show. It’s a retelling of a classic but told from a lens, through a character’s point of view, that we don’t always get to see.”
Performances are scheduled for December 5-29 at 7 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 6:30 p.m. Sundays and 1:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays at at Alley Theatre, 615 Texas. For more information, call 713-220-5700 or visit alleytheatre.org. $51-$61.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
