Brave new Scrooge Trinity’s Christmas Carol reinvents the wheel BY BILL RODRIGUEZ

There’s good reason that Dickens’s A Christmas Carol at Trinity Rep (through December 24) has become an annual event for many families. Like the holiday season itself, there have been endless variations on the theme. Unlike versions at other regional theaters, at Trinity for the past 29 years directors have been encouraged to spin fresh new takes on the dynamic adaptation by founder Adrian Hall and composer Richard Cumming, with additional music by the latter.

This year’s is one of the best, compared with the usually successful variations I’ve enjoyed over the past two decades. Director Amanda Dehnert has managed to take this familiar vehicle and reinvent the wheel. Dehnert, who has been serving as acting artistic director, directed the show in 1997, but has usually been its music director. (This year Tim Robinson fills that spot.)

Ingenuity plays as much of a role as Ebenezer Scrooge this time around. The Ghost of Christmas Present starts out as a young boy, for example, and continues through grown-up and gray-haired actors as the scene progresses. The Ghost of Christmas Future, described by Dickens as a silent, hooded wraith with only its outstretched arm visible, is reduced even further — to a mere shadow pointing here and there on the snow-covered stage, the actor nearly out of sight high above.

Evocative atmosphere is crucial to draw us into the emotional tale, and the simple, stark set design by Jeremy Woodward establishes that as directly as possible, with snow. Across the stage and side platforms, artificial snow is heaped and drifted, reminding us of Scrooge’s cold, cold heart as well as the brutal circumstances of the poor in the story. We couldn’t sympathize more when Bob Crachit is reprimanded for trying to sneak a lump of coal into the tiny countinghouse stove.

Dehnert has directed this very theatrically. At the opening, there is a surprise entrance of the first of many narrators — you won’t see it coming. The use of the company as a whole to tell the story helps to draw us into it as a communal event. The ensemble is constantly transforming: one moment they are dancing at a festivity or snorting in the street as horses pulling an imaginary sleigh, and the next they are spirits yanking chains and ropes, hauling Marley’s ghost back to purgatory. (A lovely use of Jacob Marley, the business partner who dies under Scrooge’s cold stare at the beginning, is at the end when an unchained Marley places a comforting hand on the repentant Scrooge, finally redeemed himself.)

William Damkoehler is Scrooge in the "Holly Cast," where he plays the curmudgeon not as an ogre but as a terminally rational man. Near the beginning, two charity solicitors come to his business asking for money to give the poor some holiday cheer; when Scrooge observes that if the poor die they will usefully "decrease the surplus population," he’s not being bitter, he’s being logical. In this way, Damkoehler plays Ebenezer loosely enough to playfully mimic the outrage of the woman who has asked for a donation. This Scrooge isn’t emotionally invested in callousness, so it’s plausible that once his heart is thawed it can actually warm up. A fascinating, subtle performance.

In the "Ivy" casting, Tim Crowe is physically the classic Scrooge, as lanky as Ichabod Crane and wearing a scowl that looks skull-deep. Temperamentally he also nails the surly meanness of the man, but lets him enjoy his arrogant righteousness at being a skinflint. But where Crowe particularly shines is after Ebenezer’s change of heart — he positively glows with giddy joy, as though he’s woken from the bad dream of his life as much as of his grim visitation.

In the supporting cast, Cratchit is played by Mauro Hantman and Stephen Thorne, who both give him a properly gentle spirit. Thorne sets his Crachit apart by deepening the gentleness, which amplifies our sympathy at the death of Tiny Tim. This year the Ghost of Christmas Past is a white-garbed sprite with fairy wings, whom both Jessica Crandall and Beth Hallaren play all grins and spirit. An entertaining opportunity every year is the role of Mrs. Partlet, played this time by Samara Abrams and Janice Duclos. Veteran Duclos brings her to especially vivid life in the Ivy cast, as someone trying to keep her Christmas cheer in a wearying world. Dehnert has given the actors liberty to toss asides into the text, and Duclos’s description of taking the fancy nightshirt off of Scrooge’s corpse — "crack, crack, crack" — is good, grim fun. Also in Ivy, Fred Sullivan Jr. plays both Marley and Topper, a randy guest at a party, and he milks the latter gleefully.

All in all, a good year for both us and Ebenezer.