‘A Christmas Carol’ @ Dallas Theater Center
Production photo by Karen Almond
—Martha Heimberg
Staged versions of Charles Dickens’1843 novella A Christmas Carol abound. The New York Times reports some 170 years of stage adaptations, beginning a few years after the publication of the story, plus some 16 (or so) film and TV versions.
Small wonder that this story hit big—and lasted. Merry old Victorian England was in the thick of the Industrial Revolution. The rich were getting richer on the backs of workers (including young children) toiling in dreadful conditions. From coal mines to shipyards, from iron mills to textile factories, workers put in 12-hour (or more) days six days a week, all for the enrichment of a new breed of greedy capitalists. In our own time we continue to see great poverty and growing social and economic inequality as we gather to celebrate the holiday.
You can probably think of a few billionaires who might profit—morally, I mean—by seeing this show.
It’s no small feat, then, that the Dallas Theater Center, celebrating the l1th anniversary of Kevin Moriarty’s fine and popular adaptation of A Christmas Carol, again brings us both the festivity of the season, and a resounding reminder that, as Scrooge says, “[hu]mankind” and “the common welfare” are still our business.
Featuring twenty-two actors, including some extraordinarily talented child actors, DTC’s Carol is lavishly produced. Cody Dry’s evocative musical direction includes musicians playing onstage, taking part in the story as they make lively music on various instruments. We hear everything from medieval songs to favorite carols, each sung in poignant solos and by the entire vibrant ensemble. Joel Ferrell’s brisk period choreography gets everybody in the dance, until finally even Bah-Humbug Scrooge joins in. Jen Caprio’s costumes, add vintage texture and color to the show—and the posh Victorian clothes in particular are beautifully fitted.
The 90-minute play, directed with a thriller’s pace and buoyancy by Alex Organ (who directed last year’s 10th anniversary production as well), stays focused on Scrooge, played by Bob Hess as an angry, stubborn man running a darkly menacing factory—and enjoying every grinding, ghastly minute of his power.
Set Designer Beowulf Boritt’s huge furnaces, enhanced by Jeff Croiter’s lighting design, belch hellish fire and smoke from the Wyly Theater’s large thrust stage. Oblivious to the ragged, coughing children pushing wheelbarrows on Christmas Eve, Hess’s Scrooge is indignant about the very idea of a worker taking the day off tomorrow.
Even a loving and sweet-natured nephew (John Broda is very appealing) can’t budge his uncle’s cynical outlook toward Christmas. Loyal foreman Bob Cratchit (a cheery Ivan Jasso makes an admirable foil for his grouchy boss) has a big family to feed, including his lame and fragile son Tiny Tim (Victoria N. Gomez/Vivian Martin), but Scrooge could care less. Hard to believe such a mean, selfish old geezer will somehow become a jubilant, generous human being through a miraculous rebirth.
Then…the scene shifts, his bed rises from center stage, and Scrooge hears something rattling.
Dickens’ novella is subtitled “A Ghost Story of Christmas,” and sure enough, a chain-bound ghost begins the familiar journey. Scrooge’s late business partner Marley, a frazzled Sally Nystuen Vahle, tells him she wears “the chains I forged in life” as she moans and pulls at her ragged dress. Terrifying in her urgency to help her former partner before it’s too late, Marley leaps on Scrooge’s back and begs him to listen to the three ghosts that will visit him this night. If he doesn’t, she warns, he will end up sharing her restless fate through eternity.
Before we know it, the Ghost of Christmas Past (an empathetic Bri Woods) appears. We learn of Scrooge’s lonely childhood, but also of his joyful apprenticeship with Mr. Fezziwig (Randy Pearlman), a hearty, foot-stomping party dude. Hess’s face softens as hardhearted Scrooge sees all the friends he once loved.
In moments, the bubbly Ghost of Christmas Present (Nicolette James Gosselin/Olivia Meredith) arrives, doing a frisky dance played on a French horn. Scrooge is initially unmoved by the plight of the Cratchit family he sees gathering for a meager Christmas dinner. But by the time the grim Ghosts of the Future show him what’s to come of poor Tiny Tim (plus a glimpse of his own cold death bed), Scrooge trembles, looks back on his life, and vows to be a better man…if he is given a second chance.
And suddenly it’s a new day, Christmas Day, and Scrooge is awake in his room. He skips around his empty bed in wonder and delight. “I’m alive! It’s Christmas! I feel like a baby!” he shouts. The former miser shocks everyone with his generosity: he sends a giant turkey for the Cratchits and gives a box of cash to charity. Hess’s Scrooge has a new life, and his stiffness becomes a happy, laughing twirl of gladness. “I’ve rejoined the human race!” he tells nephew Fred, and promptly dances with his pretty wife.
After the rousing curtain call, Hess steps forward to remind audiences that the production’s annual partnership with the North Texas Food Bank has raised nearly one million dollars over the past decade—and they hope to hit that mark with this production. Go DTC!
We leave the theater with lifted hearts, having witnessed this happy human redemption—and hearing the full ensemble sing joyfully of bells ringing. Good will to all, and peace on earth. How wonderful that would be.
WHEN: November 30-December 30, 2023
WHERE: Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre, Dallas Arts District
WEB: dallastheatercenter.org
