Marvelous!

Trinity's delightful twin Carols

by Bill Rodriguez

A CHRISTMAS CAROL. By Charles Dickens, adapted by Adrian Hall and Richard Cumming, with original music by Richard Cumming. Directed by Mark Lerman. With Tim Crowe, William Damkoelher, Fred Sullivan Jr., Dan Welch, Peter Husovsky. At Trinity Repertory Company through December 26.

Nostalgia would be great -- if only it weren't so repetitious. Hundreds of theater companies around the country stage Dickens' A Christmas Carol as a reliable annual fund-raiser, remaking the same recipe, trusting this sentimental tale of redemption to warm the heart like a well-spiked holiday punch. But Trinity Repertory Company takes deserved pride in doing it the hard way, starting from scratch every year, revisiting and restaging the event each time.

And this time around, the 23rd, the Adrian Hall-Richard Cumming adaptation is a special marvel. Director Mark Lerman creates a Victorian version, complete with wrinkled canvas flats shoved out for backgrounds on a proscenium stage, and he adds the overall metaphor of this being presented to Ebenezer Scrooge as a theatrical melodrama of his life.

This year, in addition to two separate casts, we have three enjoyable Scrooges. Tim Crowe has been the gold standard of the role in recent years, his lanky frame and blustery manner establishing the kind of definitive authority that Alastair Sim did in the 1951 movie version. Crowe is alternating in the "Ivy" cast with Fred Sullivan, Jr., who brings a lot of humor to the role, playing Ebenezer as an outsized curmudgeon who is flippant to the ghost of Marley and who often seems on the brink of doing a Groucho Marx imitation. Delightful. In contrast, William Damkoehler in the "Holly" cast plays a gruffer Scrooge, a formidable ogre whose eventual transformation traverses a greater emotional distance, and is able to move us more.

The ghost of Jacob Marley, Scrooge's late, unlamented business partner, is always a spooky treat, since he's the first and most woeful of the apparitions to appear. In the past he sometimes has flown in, howling on wires, and while this year his entrance isn't so spectacular, it is a startling surprise. Both Ricardo Pitts-Wiley (Holly) and Peter Husovsky (Ivy) turn up the burner on the anguish to good effect. Of course, the part of Scrooge's mistreated clerk Bob Cratchit (which Sullivan has done to abject perfection in the past) is another secondary role that leaves a vivid impression. Dan Welch (Holly) has an especially earnest take on the longsuffering father of Tiny Tim, and Jim Barton (Ivy) is also quite simpatico.

A comic treat is always Mrs. Partlet, the overworked housekeeper who has to serve Scrooge his usual tea and gruel on Christmas morning. In the past, my personal favorite has been Peggy Melozzi, for the way she slowly reduced to a tear-spurting puddle when it seemed that Scrooge's unaccountable generosity might have carnal intent. This year two Trinity heavyweights enliven the tiny role that has such a big effect on the tone of the story. Barbara Meek (Holly) and Barbara Orson (Ivy) show that the variations on beset, bothered and bewildered are not only infinite but can be very funny.

Sometimes it's the little touches are the most delightful, as they crop up in unexpected places: The Cratchit kids giggling off-stage when their parents kiss (Holly). Marley sinking under the weight of money boxes that demons pile on, as he sinks into a trap door that glows red. Scrooge (Sullivan) drawing his hand back from the heat. Perhaps my favorite touch was accomplished off-stage, by scenic designers Tom Buckland and Katherine Lovell. It was so low-key it may not have been noticed by some in the audience, but through the technical wizardry of scrim cloth and back-lighting, the vast gilded arch over the proscenium was made to slowly change into a dilapidated, brick-exposed expanse. That was when the last ghost silently showed Scrooge a bleak future if he didn't change. I loved the effect, and the reminder that we had been in cagey, professional hands.

Lerman, who is artistic director of the nearby Perishable Theatre, was wise to make A Christmas Carol so theatrical. It is, after all, a treacly sob story that would be off-putting rather than touching if we weren't so fond of it. Characters frequently address the audience, to pull us in, in the presentational mode as old as Greek choruses. Stylizing the tale as blatantly as a marionette show is a good way to distance us from the mechanics, and help us look past the strings being pulled. Our delight in the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge draws from the kind of hope and affirmation tradtionally found off the stage during the holiday season. This year, Trinity's rediscovering A Christmas Carol and creating something new -- yet again -- is indeed a blessing.