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Trinity sings a new Christmas Carol
BY CAROLYN CLAY
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A Christmas Carol
By Charles Dickens. Adapted by Oskar Eustis. Original music and lyrics by Amanda Dehnert. Set by Eugene Lee. Costumes by Deborah Newhall. Lighting by James Vermuelen. Sound by David Budries. Musical direction by Karl Shymanovitz. With Stacy Keach, Jon Blackstone, Kent French, Andrew Giordano, Keith Jochim, Timothy Crowe, Trish Aponte, David Mokriski/Brendan DeWolfe, Jessica Bonner/Alexandra Bilbo, Alisa D. Miles, Julian Reyes, Stephanie Ballard, Miguel Cervantes, Grace Napier, Jacqueline Laviolette/Jessica Tar, Gina Miele/Jaclyn Sabogal, Crystal Lake Evans/Andrew Cavanaugh, Emmee McInnis, and Sam Wartenberg/Harry VanDusen. Presented by Trinity Repertory Company at the Cutler Majestic Theatre through December 27.
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Years after its time as a Broadway breeding ground, Boston seems to have become a tryout town for . . . Providence? That’s how it looks, with Trinity Repertory Company artistic director Oskar Eustis and talented associate Amanda Dehnert coming north with a new adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, the story that, in a version by founding director Adrian Hall and composer Richard Cumming, has been a Trinity tradition for 27 years. I don’t blame the pair for not dreaming of fixing what isn’t broken — and is, moreover, beloved — without a test. They might (as Scrooge would say) be buried with stakes of holly through their hearts. The good news is that the new piece, with its overlay of the evils of the Industrial Revolution, manages to be gooey and tuneful, yet tough rather than dead as a doornail, distinguished by its mix of holiday ditties and Dehnert’s dissonant, dirge-like original music. There’s rather too much forced laughter, and Stacy Keach’s heartless miser turns the corner to Sentimental Street too easily. But this show too could become a fixture, whether here or in Providence. One could argue that, with no fewer than half a dozen versions of Dickens’s tale on area stages, we need another Christmas Carol somewhat less than Scrooge needs compassion lessons and the Cratchits need a winning Lottery ticket. But it’s nice to have one right in the Theater District, rivaling The Nutcracker as a destination for little girls in velvet dresses. Here the resplendent tykes won’t just wish they were Clara dancing with the grown-ups in the shadow of a tumescent tree; they’ll be glad they don’t work in a Victorian factory, the way the kids in the show do! In the Eustis/Dehnert version, Scrooge is not just a loan shark and financier; he presides over a big, gray, grimy, warehouse-like workplace designed by Tony winner Eugene Lee, where pipsqueak laborer Tiny Tim is injured on the job in the opening scene. Scrooge’s predictable, pre-ghostly-visits reaction: "Back to work!" Eustis’s adaptation is workmanlike but fleet and Kevin Moriarty’s production is energetic, hitting all the bases in 90 minutes. In addition to tricks of lighting and amplification, the staging features a truly ghoulish appearance by Marley’s Ghost, who in the bewigged and grimacing person of Trinity stalwart Timothy Crowe bursts through the stage floor as if spewed from Hell, trailing the chains he forged in life and borne up and down on them, against his will, like a prophetic yo-yo. As played by Crowe, lamenting dolorously while being yanked Heaven- and Hades-ward, he definitely gives off more grave than gravy. By comparison, the rest of the spirits — Tinker Bell–ish flying ballerina Trish Aponte as Christmas Past, richly berobed and hearty Keith Jochim as Christmas Present (with Ignorance and Want not tucked under his garments but out on their own), and the silvery ghost of Tiny Tim (Crystal Lake Evans) rising out of a wooden coffin as Christmas Yet To Come — are perfunctory. So, it turns out, is stage and screen star Keach’s Scrooge, tersely cantankerous in the beginning but starting to go merrily soft as soon as he gets to frisk with the phantoms. We never do understand how he got so hardened, though at the dance-filled Christmas party at old Fezziwig’s, the young Scrooge is the last to be pulled from his ledger and into the festivities. To his credit, Keach’s repentant tightwad does muster formidable fear and distress when wrestling the specter of his own mortality. The most interesting aspect of this Christmas Carol, though, is its tapestry of traditional Christmas music woven in and out of Dehnert’s harsh choral score, with its echoes of "no mercy" and a Requiem Mass. A gray-clad chorus of adults and children serves as a human and musical bridge between scenes, bearing up Dehnert’s strident Weillian contributions, which jangle against the jolly choruses of "Ding Dong Merrily on High" and "Christmas Time Today." The cast boasts some fine area voices, including those of Kent French, Miguel Cervantes, Grace Napier, and Alisa D. Miles, who as a voluminously plaid Mrs. Fezziwig delivers a creamy "Dancing Day." Certainly the music is more full-bodied than the prize turkey, which looks to have been flattened by a 21st-century SUV on its way to the Cratchits’ 19th-century doorstep.
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