What The Dickens!? reinvents A Christmas Carol through long-form improv, with big laughs and occasional misfires.

There comes a point in December when even the most devoted theatergoer has seen A Christmas Carol enough times to start craving something a little riskier. What The Dickens!? answers that impulse by tossing Dickens’ familiar tale into the unpredictable hands of improv.

Produced by Lakewood’s What If Theatre and performed by its long-form improv troupe Streaky Bacon, What The Dickens!? is an entirely improvised holiday play featuring a rotating cast along with guest players. Each performance begins with audience suggestions, then spins those prompts into a brand-new Dickensian redemption story centered on a rotating “Scrooge” figure.

There is no script, no reset button and no guarantee the story will behave itself, just 75 minutes of live invention unfolding in real time.

That element of risk is central to the show’s appeal. It is also where What The Dickens!? occasionally falters, as the same looseness that allows for big laughs and surprising turns can sometimes lead to uneven storytelling and missed connections.

A modest space with a full house

What If Theatre sits in an unassuming strip mall just off Highway 6, nestled between a liquor store, a Chinese restaurant and a kickboxing/jiu jitsu gym. Despite its slightly off-the-beaten-path location, the show was completely sold out on the Friday night I attended.

Inside, the space is simple and functional: a small stage, minimal lighting, a few actor blocks, string lights and a wreath framing a raised narrator’s chair by a faux fireplace. Everything else, from bustling Victorian streets to orphanages and parlors, is created through pantomime. The bareness puts pressure squarely on the performers, and when the ensemble is locked in, it works.

Audience participation begins almost immediately. As patrons enter, they are greeted at the box office and asked to suggest a Dickensian or Victorian-era occupation on a slip of paper. These suggestions are added to a spinning wheel that later determines a key profession (“blacksmith” the night I attended) in the story.

After a brief, tongue-in-cheek narration that sets the show’s silly tone, Cat Drago steps forward as the evening’s primary narrator. She explains the rules of show clearly, emphasizing that everything the audience is about to see is entirely improvised. She also prepares the crowd for the reality that improv can go wonderfully right or awkwardly wrong.

Drago then gathers additional suggestions directly from the audience. She asks for a type of family member whose personality tends to cause tension during the holidays. One audience member offered “the hot, drunk aunt,” complete with a description of someone who thrives on attention and drama. Finally, Drago asks for an object someone might carry in their pocket during Victorian times, which yields a shouted suggestion of “a thimble.”

These ideas are not treated as rigid prompts so much as narrative fuel. That looseness allows the performers to shape the evening organically, but it also means that some suggestions (like the blacksmith) fall away as the story gains traction or are not used (like the thimble).

Highlights of the evening

When What The Dickens!? works best, it’s because the ensemble leans into collaborative storytelling rather than individual bits. Those instincts are clearest in the evening’s lead performance by Chloe Liz, whose Lady Belle anchors the show with confidence.

Liz is a commanding improviser with sharp instincts and a magnetic stage presence. Liz’s Lady Belle is loud, vain, relentlessly self-involved and perpetually drunk. She is a smart riff on Dickens’ Scrooge, substituting emotional coldness with performative generosity and entitlement.

Just as importantly, Liz listens. She builds cleanly off her scene partners, tracks the emotional logic of the story and pulls wandering scenes back into focus. Her performance provides a clear throughline and a satisfying emotional arc, even as the surrounding scenes wobble.

Nathan Berg proves an equally strong scene partner. Early on, he grounds scenes as a hot-toddy vendor and later delivers one of the show’s funniest turns as the final ghost — a shrill, condescending real estate developer whose voice and demeanor mirror Lady Belle’s worst traits. It’s a sharp, contemporary satire that lands squarely, and Berg’s commitment elevates the climax.

Drago’s work ties those performances together. As narrator, she clearly establishes the rules of the evening. Later, as the Ghost of Christmas Present, she offers a bleak and funny portrait of a wealthy drunk who dies alone, serving as an unsettling vision of Lady Belle’s possible future. Drago consistently prioritizes clarity and momentum, helping scenes land rather than spiral.

Harrison Wilterdink, meanwhile, proves to be a flexible utility player, stepping in and out of narration, playing multiple supporting roles, and connecting easily with scene partners. His ability to adapt and support keeps the show moving during transitions.

There are also genuinely delightful comic moments scattered throughout: Lady Belle gifting orphans lumps of coal (“I just really think we should be focusing on transitioning to other forms of energy,” quipped Maynard Peralta as a hilariously self-aware orphan), her over-the-top orphan adoption for “aesthetic” purposes and the absurd specificity of Victorian social rituals. When the ensemble is listening and responding in real time, the humor feels organic and earned.

Mel Evans & Gretchen Grunzke | Photo: Rebecca Klingensmith Langford

Where the cracks show

Improv lives and dies on collective listening, and What The Dickens!? does not always sustain that discipline across its full ensemble. When scenes falter, it is usually because one or two performers stop responding to what is being offered and instead push forward with a predetermined idea.

The clearest early example comes in an early jewelry shop scene, where Lady Belle tries to fire her traditional jeweler (played by Bill Eckler) in favor of a flashier designer (Wilterdink). Rather than acknowledging the firing and adapting, Eckler’s character ignores the turn entirely and continues his original bit about how good his classic jewelry is.

The moment should have escalated Belle’s entitlement, but instead it flattened the scene and undermined a clear narrative shift because Eckler chose not to say “yes, and” to Liz’s suggestion.

That same issue resurfaces when Eckler appears as the Ghost of Christmas Past. He plays Frederick, Lady Belle’s former French teacher, whose humiliation at her hands contributed to his tragic fate, but the execution is sluggish. Eckler struggles to settle into the character and the mechanics of the scene, delaying the emotional pivot that is essential to this part of the story.

While the audience understands the structure of A Christmas Carol and where the scene is going, the ghost’s lack of responsiveness slows the pace and blunts what should be a pivotal moment, despite Liz’s best efforts to keep the scene on track.

A similar breakdown occurs in a scene involving orphans. When Liz gifts them coal, Peralta immediately responds with the gag about switching to clean energy. Rather than expanding on that logic, his fellow orphan, Reverie Klein, abruptly abandons the scene’s reality by eating the coal, drawing attention to a disconnected gag that ends the conversation rather than continuing it.

These moments don’t ruin the show, but they do sap its momentum. You can feel the audience’s energy dip when characters talk over each other or fail to acknowledge each other.

The issue is not a lack of talent but a lack of alignment. Some performers are clearly tracking the story and responding in real time, while others are in their own world. In long-form improv, that imbalance becomes part of the narrative, and not in a way that serves the show.

A holiday experiment worth revisiting

Still, at 75 minutes with no intermission, What The Dickens!? is an impressive feat of sustained improvisation. Keeping a narrative engine running that long, with rotating narrators, shifting ghosts and a full redemption arc, is no small task, and the ambition deserves credit.

More than anything, the show suggests potential. There aren’t many companies in the Denver metro area attempting fully improvised plays based on classic texts, and Streaky Bacon’s Dickens-inspired approach feels distinct. With sharper ensemble listening and a tighter shared focus, this could be a standout seasonal tradition.

As it stands, What The Dickens!? is uneven but engaging. Like improv itself, it’s messy, surprising, occasionally frustrating and sometimes genuinely delightful. And in a holiday season crowded with familiar comforts, there’s something refreshing about a show that might go terribly wrong or wonderfully right every single night.