You expect a great turkey dinner with all the fixins when you go to Cornwell’s Dinner Theatre in Marshall. After all, the farm/restaurant complex is called Turkeyville USA, and a rafter of the fowl are strutting their stuff outside the barn.

But this year’s holiday show, “Cornwell’s Christmas Carol,” is more about hamming it up.

Created by producer/director Dennis McKeen, the two-hour show is basically a holiday music revue set at the family gathering of four country bumpkins who favor tacky tinsel décor and turn on the lights by clapping. The script is corny, but the songs are well done.

Uncle Cletus (Peter Riopelle) and Cousin Otis (Eric Cover) seem comfortable playing complete hicks. They sing hokey holiday parodies such as “Jingle Beers” and “Grandma Got Run Over by a John Deere.” They even sing with a twang and “yer” instead of “you.”

Cindy Lou (Holly Norton-McKeen) and Jimmie Ray (Shawn Fletcher) use a hayseed drawl when they are talking, but once the music starts they sing like angels with perfect enunciation. Jimmie Ray garnered hoots as well as applause for his stirring rendition of “O Holy Night.” Cindy Lou seemed perfectly sincere singing “Merry Christmas, Darling,” even though the audience soon realized the object of her affection was a pet pig.

For the first half hour there isn’t a hint of a connection to  the Charles Dickens Christmas classic, but a about halfway through the first act, the four characters decide to entertain themselves by acting out scenes from “A Christmas Carol.” They take turns playing Ebenezer Scrooge. This bumps up the show’s theatricality considerably, even though plenty of yokel yaks remain.

The spirit of Jacob Marley arrives from the most surprising place with lots of fog, flashing lights and sound effects.  He’s wearing a wreath of beer cans instead of the chains of the netherworld. And when Ebenezer is too frightened to go back to sleep, Marley sings him to sleep with “Silent Night.”

Each of the other spirits arrives in equally surprising ways, with lots of fun twists. For instance, Jimmie Ray plays “Billy Bob” Cratchit as a lisping, bespectacled nerd, while Otis, the tallest member of the cast, is “Tiny Tim Bob.”

Between the scenes, the characters return to their hillbilly personas to sing a few holiday songs. The trio of men adds sunglasses for a jazzy “Santa Claus is Back in Town.” Cindy Lou climbs up on top of the piano to sing “Cool Yule” and joins with Jimmie Ray for a delightful duet on “Winter Wonderland.”

The finale, “12 Days of a Redneck’s Christmas,” is creatively staged, and mercifully shortened to just the right length to be funny. Music director William Asher deserves a nod for using arrangements that make the familiar holiday repertoire seem fresh and energetic. This is particularly true of the encore, a sassy, syncopated version of “We Three Kings.”

Cornwell’s  restaurant has a long history of serving tasty turkey dishes. The food service to a packed theater of 175 people runs smoothly from a simple salad and hearty bean and spinach soup before the turkey buffet to a choice of three desserts after. They even plan the schedule with an hour break between dinner and the beginning of the show so patrons can shop at one of the stores on the property while the tables are cleared. This also assures that all that tryptophan in the turkey doesn’t lull the audience to sleep.

Friday’s audience was lively and alert. When Scrooge woke up after the final spirit’s visit, he asked “What day is it?” Right on cue, someone in the audience shouted, “Christmas!” Scrooge continued the interaction with the audience, suggesting someone go get a turkey from Cornwell’s for the Cratchit family.

So if you’ve got a hankering for a huge turkey feast, and don’t mind a stage show that doesn’t take itself too seriously, add Cornwell’s to your holiday calendar.