Next to Santa and the UPS guy, Ebenezer Scrooge is possibly the busiest man on the planet this time of year, and you have to believe it really yanks the old skinflint's chain to be trotted across so many stages and through so many different takes on his story.
AL SCHLEGEL
As Scrooge, Ron Choularton is at the center of North Coast Rep's "A Christmas Carol."
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It's reasonably easy to turn in a just-OK staging of “A Christmas Carol” – the simple elegance of the Dickens story forgives a lot of faults. It's much harder to mount something fresh and memorable.
Some adaptations are too mawkish; others are so rigidly tradition-bound it's as though they're performed inside a snow globe. A few are just too out there (although San Diego Rep managed some daring successes – including a gangster version – during its recently ended 30-year “Carol” run).
At this point, it might seem reasonable to despair of seeing anything really new from Scrooge. And then along comes a version as pure and moving and true as the one now onstage at North Coast Rep.
What's startling about Jacqueline Goldfinger's new adaptation, commissioned by the theater, is the way it hews so closely to the original 1843 novella, yet finds a way to make it feel naturally, gracefully theatrical.
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“A Christmas Carol”
North Coast Repertory Theatre
When: Fridays 7 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 and 6 p.m.; with additional Wednesday and Thursday matinees. Through Dec. 30.
Where: North Coast Repertory Theatre, 987 Lomas Santa Fe Drive, Solana Beach.
Tickets: $23-$40
Phone: (858) 481-1055
Online: northcoastrep.org
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The key is right in the title. Dickens thought of the story in quasi-musical terms, and the jolly carolers whom Scrooge chases from his doorway are a fixture of many adaptations.
Goldfinger and the play's director, Joe Powers, extend and expand that motif so that the carolers are also the cast – grouped in ensembles at times so that they act as a kind of Greek chorus, then flowing seamlessly into their roles as the scenes require.
Scrooge, needless to say, doesn't see fit to join in until the very end; his isolation from his fellow humans is reflected in his deafness (or at least indifference) to their voices.
It's not necessarily the first time this basic idea has been tried, but the genius of Goldfinger's approach is in how she uses it to tease out the shadings of humor, anger and irony in the first-person narrator's voice.
In the very first scene, she casts the back story of Scrooge and his late partner, Jacob Marley, cannily as juicy gossip that the carolers jostle to divulge. Later, as the ghost story unfolds, the singers fan out to become shadowy spooks who herald Marley's return from the grave.
The plot is familiar enough by now that most people likely could recite it in their slumber (without benefit of moonlighting ghouls to stoke their memories). Scrooge is visited in his bed chamber first by Marley – who warns him of the eternal consequences of his uncharitable ways – and then by three spirits who show him past, present and (possible) future.
(One thing remains a mystery: What, exactly, does Scrooge do for a living? Lawyer? Accountant? Purveyor of adjustable-rate mortgages?)
Powers has cast a strong, cohesive ensemble, one whose members harmonize with quiet grace and move easily into their acting roles. The company includes such longtime local standouts as Susan Denaker, Jesse MacKinnon (suitably ominous as the chain-draped Marley), and – playing the Master Miser himself – Ron Choularton.
Rachael Van Wormer is a magnetic presence (and demonstrates a warm, fetching voice) as the young Scrooge's fiance and other characters, and young Austyn Myers seems perfectly at home as Tiny Tim, the ailing Cratchit lad.
Choularton has played Bob Cratchit in previous local “Christmas Carols,” and had the lead role of Marley in a topsy-turvy, one-man reimagining at NCRT in 2002. But he slips more than comfortably into Scrooge's shoes here.
His dramatic turnaround, when Scrooge finally loosens the chains from his own hardened heart, is a miniature tour de force: There are only so many ways to physically express the sentiment “I'm so happy that I'm not dead and hated!” but Choularton expertly conveys Scrooge's crescendo of compassion.
Designed with a minimum of fuss by Marty Burnett and wrapped in Chris Luessmann's haunting soundscape, this concise (90 minutes, no intermission) but sublime staging passes “much too quickly – like a breath,” to use Scrooge's words.
But also like a breath, it's a sweet affirmation of life.
Writer: Jacqueline Goldfinger, from the novel by Charles Dickens. Director: Joe Powers. Sets: Marty Burnett. Lighting: Karain Filijan. Sound: Chris Luessmann. Costumes: Jan Mah. Cast: Ron Choularton, Susan Denaker, Rachael Van Wormer, Jesse MacKinnon, Austyn Myers, Amanda Cowles, Brian Mackey, Don Pugh, John Tessmer, Patrick Wenk-Wolff.
