Local color

Trinity Rhody-izes its annual Christmas Carol

by Bill Rodriguez

A CHRISTMAS CAROL. By Charles Dickens; adapted by Adrian Hall and Richard Cumming. Directed by Neal Baron. At Trinity Repertory Company through December 27.

Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol is the Energizer bunny of the holiday season. (Please pardon the color clash of the imagery.) Between the appeal of its High Drama and high spirits -- often literally, thanks to Flying by Foy -- theaters across the country can stage it annually as a reliable money-maker that subsidizes the rest of the season.

Trinity Repertory Company has done so famously for the past 22 seasons, using the bright and dynamic version by Adrian Hall and Richard Cumming for all but the dour year when Anne Bogart was artistic director. (Perhaps the only depressing adaptation of the tale ever written, it vied for solemnity with High Mass at the nearby cathedral.) As in Providence, many theaters mount original adaptations, to avoid paying royalties. (There's even a popular Noh version in San Francisco.) But Trinity takes that one step farther, re-envisioning the show every year, with different directors and different stagings. One year the ghost of Marley can come swooping and howling out of the rafters, the next year the Ghost of Christmas Present might rise toward the ceiling as his costume unfolds into a Christmas tree.

As a result, Trinity's production got so popular that in 1996 two companies began performing, to double the shows every week. Today A Christmas Carol accounts for more than a quarter of the theater's annual box office. Audiences don't know what to expect from year to year, so sometimes people return even when they no longer have the excuse of kids begging them. Sometimes actors who have been in the cast year after year end up directing it, bringing along ideas they have accumulated. Sometimes guest directors take up the challenge to look at it freshly. Sometimes the show is as bright as a new penny, and once in a while it's as tired as last year's tinsel.

Remarkably, after nearly two dozen versions, this season's production demonstrates that there's no end to the inventiveness that can make the story such a delightful play. Neal Baron, Trinity associate director, has directed one of the freshest productions of A Christmas Carol in years.

It's not only an Americanized version, with Scrooge counting dollars instead of pounds, it's a Rhode Island-ized one. The factory that Fezziwig runs and that the young Scrooge and Marley worked at is a toy manufacturer named Fezzbro. Cars whizzing around the stage include a RIPTA bus and the Haven Brothers food van. When it snows, Foster-Glocester is closed down. When the radio is on, we hear Doug White and Patrice Wood, and on her talk show Arlene Violet speaks with Marley, who says he's calling from Swan Point Cemetery.

But by no means does name-dropping alone make it endearing -- the gaiety Scrooge regrets missing out on is bubbling over. Boot-stomping country hoe-down music fills the parlor at nephew Fred's, for a dance scene filled with merriment. And yet Baron also makes sure that the story stays soulful.

All the above makes both Trinity versions especially delightful this year. Of course, Timothy Crowe has a lock on the Scrooge we all envision: gangly, mean as a bag of snakes, nevertheless capable of transforming rapture. That's why in 1988 Trinity broke their tradition of using a different actor each year -- under audience demand, Crowe has been Ebenezer all but three years since then. Also in the "Ivy" cast, you're not going to find a more appealing Bob Cratchit, his clerk, than Fred Sullivan. He's comically intimidated by his surly boss, but when we see Cratchit with Tiny Tim and the rest of his family he's as dignified as a well-loved monarch. In the crucial role of Scrooge's partner, Jacob Marley, Cynthia Strickland is a howling delight as his ghost. (The ever- enjoyable Janice Duclos was out sick in the Ivy cast, so Strickland filled in on their Press Night.)

None of which is to say that you won't have a Dickens of a time with Barbara Meek's Scrooge and Lawrence Bull's Cratchit in the "Holly" cast. Meek takes a subdued approach to the curmudgeon, in contrast to Crowe's larger-than-life misanthrope. Her more thoughtful Scrooge might better satisfy those who have remained unconvinced that the archetypal misanthrope could have a change of mind as well as heart.

Neither can you go wrong with either version if you want to see a great Dancing Traffic Cop. The Crowe cast has the real thing, Providence's famous Tony Lepore, doing the contortions. But in the other cast the smaller and sprier Sean Meehan does the same moves with acrobatic impressiveness that wowed my crowd.

And if you can't decide which to go to, why not see both? Someone will lend you a kid if you need an excuse.