Hound dog meets humbug in Unicorn’s ‘Iggy Scrooge’
The rarefied world of rock ’n’ roll has always been a sport for voyeurs, never more so than when their beloved icons declare themselves to be infants in men’s bodies.
Overdoses, backstage tantrums, trashed hotel rooms, incoherent tongue-lashings of roadies and managers — this is the stuff of which rock legends are made.
But what happens when the fortunes of a rock star begin to fade? What happens then?
“Now he’s got that Journey-playing-at-the-state-fair kind of thing going on,” said Matt Rapport, who plays the title role in the Unicorn Theatre production of “The Salvation of Iggy Scrooge.”
The show is a rock musical by playwrights Larry Larson and Eddie Levi Lee and composer Edd Key that you could call a free adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.”
“Iggy Scrooge” made its debut in 1994, the result of several years of work by the collaborators. Three years later it was staged by the Unicorn, which this year brings it back as an acerbic alternative to more traditional holiday shows.
Larson recalled that it all began when Lee wrote an adaptation of “A Christmas Carol” in the 1980s.
“It wasn’t ‘Iggy Scrooge,’ but it was an updated version,” Larson said from Atlanta. “I thought it would be perfect as a rock musical. I kept noodling with it and finally we went ahead and decided to write it.”
The show actually follows the Dickens original fairly closely. Iggy is the stand-in for Ebenezer Scrooge, and Bob Marley, naturally enough, becomes the surrogate for the ghost of Jacob Marley. After falling into a drug stupor, Iggy is then visited by two more spirits — one resembling Buddy Holly (the Ghost of Christmas Past), the other Elvis (Ghost of Christmas Present) — and eventually realizes he’s been acting like a jerk for far too long.
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