by Alex Brooks
The Capital Rep has opened a new stage adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, starring Hoosick Falls’ own Kevin McGuire.
The familar story is re-worked here in a new version penned this year by the English actor, comedian and playwright Patrick Barlow.
The script focuses less on the scorn and dislike that others feel for Scrooge, or on his dying friendless and unadmired, and more on the ways that he has closed himself off from people who wanted to love him because he was so driven by money and material success.
The central problem of the play, from a dramatic point of view, is motivating his amazing transformation, making it believable, and this script finds it in the snuffed-out enthusiasms of his youth rather than in the fear of a lonely, unloved death. It feels more like Scrooge is rediscovering a part of himself that he had suppressed rather than being cowed by threats of dire consequences to come.
Another innovative feature of this script is that it limits itself to five actors. McGuire plays Scrooge and only Scrooge. The other four actors play everybody else, including occasionally the clock and the furniture, which sometimes talk back to Scrooge. One might think this would get confusing, but in the hands of these talented actors, it works.
The play is frequently funny and always fresh and surprising. The young Scrooge and Tiny Tim are puppets; the Ghost of Christmas Present is a vastly entertaining cockney woman, and the Ghost of Christmas Future, inexplicably, looks just like Ozzie Osborne. This antic sensibility is expressed also in the abundant physical movement of the staging. They fly, they climb ladders, they dance, they sing and, generally, keep things moving.
The sets are ingeniously done, with a minimum of trundling big items from place to place. The show sometimes moves from inside to outside with just some changes in lighting, yet the mid-Victorian setting is convincingly evoked, and the visual effects are often beautiful or even spectacular. The costumes are also outstanding.
To rediscover the true spirit of Christmas, one can hardly do better than to see this production. It serves well as an antidote to the commercialism that pervades the season nowadays. Dickens’ story, indeed, was one of the formative influences in the creation of the idea of Christmas as a time for generosity and good will to all, and this production stays close to the spirit embodied in Dickens’ original story from 1843.
A Christmas Carol runs through Sunday, December 22. Performance times are 7:30 pm Tuesday through Thursday and 8 pm Friday and Saturday with matinees at 3 pm Saturday and 2 pm Sunday and Wednesday, December 4. The Capital Repertory Theatre is located at 111 North Pearl Street, Albany. Tickets range from $20 to $60. Students with valid ID and children under 17 pay $16 for all shows. For tickets call Tickets by Proctors, 518-445-7469 or visit capitalrep.org.