Review: At 2nd Space Theatre, ‘A Christmas Carol’ boasts a sterling Scrooge and an intriguing, if uneven, new adaptation
By Heather Parish
In my world, the Yuletide season begins once I’ve encountered one of Charles Dickens’ “Christmas Spirit Stories.” (Yes, there is more than just one!) Sometimes, I attend The Great Dickens Christmas Fair in full 1850s dress. Other years are spent quietly at home re-reading “The Holly-Tree,” “The Chimes,” or “The Seven Poor Travelers.” Nearly every year, I listen to Neil Gaiman’s reading of “A Christmas Carol” for the New York Public Library, which I highly recommend.
This year’s hit of Christmas nostalgia came in a time-honored tradition: the trip to the theater to see a holiday-themed play. Good Company Players’ “A Christmas Carol,” adapted by Emily Pessano and directed by Elizabeth Fiester, is designed for family-memory-making, offering a (mostly) traditional version of the story that clocks in well under two hours, including the intermission.
Fiester’s staging of the story is smooth and clever, leveraging David Pierce’s set with multiple doors and trick walls, and playing up the somber ghost-story elements in the front half of the play. The ensemble movement and choreography (by Kailyn Sanders) are dynamic and purposeful, and the added touch of a few nicely sung carols and some humor round out the show well.
As Scrooge, Henry Montelongo is exceptionally suited to turning a lonely misanthrope into a buoyant bon vivant on a dime. His performance is a delight to watch, both as Scrooge the misanthrope and Scrooge the bon vivant. Montelongo is not a stereotypical Scrooge (slight and angular), but his presence on the stage carries a dark cloud that slowly lifts with each beat of his character’s awakening. His is one of my favorite performances of this year.
Other standout performances include Jeremy Marks as nephew Fred, Jessica Rose Knotts as Scrooge’s former love Belle, and Stefan Prater as family man Bob Cratchit. I particularly want to note Oliver Gonzalez, who mastered a stage-fall, a limp, and an accent for his role as Tiny Tim. His stage presence is the kind that makes an audience smile from his first entrance.
In a community production like “A Christmas Carol,” the ensemble cast usually comes with different levels of skill and experience, and that’s the case here. The performances are uneven in places, but they give their all and do so with apparent enjoyment.
STORY CONTINUES AFTER SPONSORED CONTENT
Pessano’s adaptation of this story is a brand-new work. While in-story, this is a relatively straightforward version of “A Christmas Carol.” I appreciate that it uses dialogue and narration straight from the original tale. The first act clips along briskly but doesn’t leave anyone behind. The second act, however, gets derailed in a few places due to a framing device Pessano uses throughout the story.
A “mom” and a “kid” are left to entertain each other during a power outage. So the mom character (Sandra Montelongo) reads to the Kid (Trinity Deleon), providing the story’s narration and many of the play’s punchlines. They serve as an onstage stand-in for the audience, and it has a very Peter Falk/Fred Savage in “A Princess Bride” feel. Montelongo and Deleon both do a fine job with their roles, especially considering they are onstage the entire time and must act from a corner platform. Montelongo has a wonderful voice for narration so that addition is a pleasure.
However, the framing device interrupts the story’s action several times too often, usually with jokes about Gen-Z’s lack of imagination, attention span, or awareness of anything before 2010. After the first few jokes, it begins to feel like punching down on a younger generation, which doesn’t illuminate anything about the story they are telling. In the second act, when the framing characters should be disrupting less and less, they instead add more commentary, which slows down the rise toward Scrooge’s crisis. Reconsidering how the framing device illuminates and drives the story will enhance Pessano’s “A Christmas Carol” in future script iterations.
The script does have pleasing aspects, including a few explanations of Victorian vocabulary and a delightful musical number breaking down the multiple meanings of “Wassail.” But the real heart of the story is, as always, in the sympathetic and touching portrayals of characters like the Cratchits, Nephew Fred, the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Christmas Present, and the specter of death that we all must face, hoping it will be a warm embrace rather than a terror in the night. The play need not be perfect. It need only be genuine.
This take on a classic tale will please families looking to make Yuletide memories. An evening at the theater seeing a play makes a fine holiday tradition to banish the humbug in all of us.
Good Company Players’ “A Christmas Carol” continues through Dec. 23 at the 2nd Space Theatre.
Heather Parish is a recovering thespian and cheery misanthrope who still believes that theater is one of the best means of living an examined life. @heatherdparish on Instagram.
Steph
Heather with the pleasing and effective adjectives!
Not sure I love the headline – 93.4% of this review is effusive in nature, tho the headline promises more than a couple uneven ensemble members and an unenjoyed new trope.
The production sounds wonderful and your review certainly tempts me to see it!