From the opening strains of “In the Bleak Midwinter” sung by candlelight to the final rousing harmonies of “O Come All Ye Faithful,” Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s adaptation of A Christmas Carol overflows with communal cheer.
Thank you, Charles Pasternak, for once again turning adults into children who can lean into the timeless tale Charles Dickens gave us to enjoy.
The community, young and old, came with hearts wide open to the Vets Hall and left singing carols and wiping their eyes. I was among those in the full-house matinee last week, charmed by rustic vaudeville flourishes and the seemingly infinite relevance of this familiar tale.
Any attempt to compress Dickens’ exceptional (and highly sentimental) morality play into an hour and a half of panto, with a tiny cast and a few well-placed props, must of course skirt—nay, omit—some of the finer points of this Christmas story.
This production gives us the mighty Mike Ryan as the man so grumpy his very name is iconic. Scrooge. Bah, humbug! And yet his harrowing journey from past to future still has profound lessons and delights to offer.
No, it’s not Shakespeare, nor is it embroidered with elaborate sets and long passages of poetry. Actors literally reach across the imaginary footlights time and again. It is above all a show, happening in the vintage Veterans Memorial Hall, and the audience is bound to include squirming pre-teens amongst the parents and grandparents eager to introduce the next generation to the irreplaceable joys of stagecraft.
Thanks to well-placed music—and Charles Pasternak is right in his assessment of Sound Designer Luke Shepherd’s genius—and a cast of highly talented players, A Christmas Carol succeeds where it matters. For every rushed speech, there was the enchantment of authentic carols sung beautifully in four-part harmony. For the occasional thicker than clotted cream English accent, there were dancing and parlor games filling the modest stage with the stuff of long memories.
The sight of ridiculously talented Andrea Sweeney Blanco, shimmering in glittering white robes as the Spirit of Christmas Past, sends chills down the spine. We, along with the incredulous curmudgeon Scrooge, follow her as she shows him his life’s destructive milestones, the actions that led him to an existence of lonely greed.
Here’s where something disconnects in Pasternak’s ambitious adaptation of the novella. Too suddenly Scrooge bewails his sins and longs to make amends. Cue the ever-awesome Julie James. Clad in the most appealing Christmas costume ever devised (kudos to B. Modern), James as the Spirit of Christmas Present begins to show Scrooge the suffering of the everyday folk surrounding his tight-fisted accounting business. And here the chemistry among Eddie Lopez (many parts, including Bob Cratchit), Blanco and the amazing Charlotte Boyce Munson enriches the center of the story.
Before you can say “God Bless Us, Every One,” Scrooge has been shown the inevitable sorrows of a life lived without compassion or generosity. Determined to make amends, he immediately starts becoming someone of whom it would be said, “he was a man who knew how to keep Christmas.”
Between the gorgeous carols—“Deck the Halls,” “Good King Wenceslas,” “The Holly and the Ivy,” and more—and young players Lincoln Best (bravo!) and Sigrid Breidenthal, who portrayed the Cratchits’ children, there were few dry eyes in the house.
It’s true that the English accents were often way too broad, and way too quickly delivered. Many passages were almost unintelligible, especially to those not weaned on BritBox. And the precarious spiral staircase set likes to shimmy and shake.
Yet there’s no denying the generous spirit that brings Pasternak, his co-director Angela Lopes and his cast of all-stars down from DeLaveaga Park to strut their stuff among us, at a time of year when we need exactly this sort of sweet stagecraft. And above all the Yuletide message of compassion and connection polished to a diamond’s edge by Charles Dickens.
A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens and adapted by Charles Pasternak, plays through Dec. 24 at the Santa Cruz Veterans Memorial Hall. Tickets: $20–$69. santacruzshakespeare.org
