Review: "A Christmas Carol" at the Rep delivers holiday cheer with a message

Scrooge and the Cratchit family
Photo: Jerry Naunheim, Jr.

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"I have always thought of Christmas time," wrote Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol, "as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."

In our current greed-besotted American culture, with its veneration of wealth and power and poisonous hatred for those who possess neither, this may seem like a naïve or even a subversive view. Certainly it was the latter when an itinerant rabbi in the Middle East made it his core teaching two millennia ago. At least now you don't get nailed to a tree for suggesting it.

The Ghost of Christmas Present and Scrooge
Photo: Jerry Naunheim, Jr.

Still, it's an important message and it remains at the heart of the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis's splendid production of David H. Bell's stage adaptation of the Dickens novella. If anything, Bell's adaptation drives home the message of the sheer heartlessness of the "profit above all" mentality by having the young Ebenezer Scrooge go into partnership with Marley and drive his generous former employer Fezziwig into debtors' prison-a twist even Dickens didn't consider. It gilds the dramatic lily a bit but it also drives home how far Scrooge has fallen.

A very strong cast, including many more local actors than is sometimes the case at the Rep, does a fine job bringing the classic Dickens characters to life. Rep regular John Rensenhouse is a wonderfully irascible Scrooge who becomes hilariously giddy in redemption. Joneal Joplin in an imposing Marley, Ben Nordstrom thoroughly engaging as Scrooge's generous nephew Fred, and Jerry Vogel shows versatility as the Ghost of Christmas Present and Fezziwig, as does Susie Wall in the roles of the dotty Mrs. Dilber and the cheerful Mrs. Fezziwig. Amy Loui and James Michael Reed are a winning pair as the Cratchits.

A transformed Scrooge and Fred
Photo: Jerry Naunheim, Jr.

There are many other fine performances in this large and diverse cast-far too many to list here. English accents were a bit wobbly among some of the smaller parts at times, but only a real Scrooge would make a big deal about that.

Scenic Designer Robert Mark Morgan, Costume Designer Dorothy Marshall Englis, and Lighting Designer Rob Denton have all conspired to make this a strikingly good-looking and atmospheric production, with some genuinely magical appearances and disappearances for the ghosts. Steve Woolf directs with a sure hand and a good eye for striking stage pictures.

The Rep's production of A Christmas Carol is a holiday treat that will entertain the whole family while delivering an important message. It's stated most forcefully by Marley's ghost when Scrooge tries to placate him was declaring that he was always a good man of business: "Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!" This Christmas, it's a message we very much need to hear.

A Christmas Carol runs through Christmas Eve on the main stage at the Loretto-Hilton Center on the Webster University Campus. Visit the Rep's web site for details.

At the Humana Festival, "This Random World" abounds in comic coincidences

L-R: Shirine Babb and Beth Dixon
Photo: Bill Brymer

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One of the great pleasures of the novels of Charles Dickens is the often comical way in which he arranges for characters from very disparate walks of life to be connected, often by wildly improbable coincidences.  In his new comedy "This Random World," veteran comic playwright Steven Dietz stands that convention on its head. 

In Dietz's anti-Dickensian story, characters who are already related to each other, however tangentially, repeatedly miss making connections as a result of coincidences that are as unlikely and comical as anything the great British novelist ever dreamed up.

Renata Friedman and Todd Lawson
Photo: Bill Brymer

As the play opens, Scottie—in her 70s and ailing, but still energetic—is preparing for a trip to the Shimogamo Shrine in Kyoto with her assistant and general dogsbody Bernadette.  Bernadette convinces Scottie to send Bernadette's younger sister Rhonda instead, but events conspire to force a last-minute cancellation on Scottie's part, sending Rhonda to Japan on her own.  Meanwhile, Scottie's daughter Beth, who believes her mother to be a shut-in, has taken off on an adventurous and expensive trip of her own to Nepal where, because of a missed connection, she is thrown together with Gary, a new-agey life coach and the ex-boyfriend of the outrageously neurotic Claire, who is the ex-girlfriend of Scottie's son Tim.

As for Tim, he's a failed writer and computer hacker whose already off-track life is sent into a genuine tailspin when his prank hack of a mortuary's server results in the publication of his own fictional obituary.  His attempts to explain to Rhonda—who just happens to work at said mortuary—that he is actually alive prove to be as funny as they are frustrating.

Nate Miller and Brenda Withers
Photo: Bill Brymer

I could have used the word "coincidentally" a lot in those last two paragraphs, but you get the idea.  As the characters' lives spin merrily out of control, the connections that might get them back on track are repeatedly missed in absurdly unlikely ways.  In one scene, for example, Bernadette just happens to leave her cell phone behind in a hospital waiting room at exactly the point when Beth, who just happens to have lost her cell, is calling from a pay phone to find out what's going on with Scottie.  As the phone rings, Tim just happens to walk in.  He answers it just as Beth impatiently hangs up.

Apparently, the phone just happens not to have voice mail.

Not all of the missed connections are funny, of course.  Dietz is too smart a playwright not to throw in a few scenes that are genuinely touching.  And those scenes work because, with the possible exception of the absurdly unhappy Claire, his characters are all well drawn and believable.

Deonna Bouye
Photo: Bill Brymer

The actors do well by these characters.  Brenda Withers's Beth is as confident as Nate Miller's Tim is lost and perennially baffled.  Beth Dixon is an appealingly feisty Scottie, nicely contrasting with Shirine Babb's patient Bernadette.  Todd Lawson's Gary is perfectly clueless and Deonna Bouye's Rhonda is hilariously motor-mouthed.  Dietz has made the role of Claire fairly one dimensional, but Renata Friedman makes her interesting nevertheless.

Dietz's script calls for a set that suggests "a world that is warm, mysterious and evocative", and designer Daniel Zimmerman has certainly delivered that.  Director Meredith McDonough keeps the action focused and smoothly flowing among the play's many scenes.

"This Random World" is essentially a one-joke play, but the variations on that joke are so ingenious that it never goes stale or wears out its welcome, remaining thoroughly entertaining right up to the surprising final scene.  Given its relatively simple technical demands, I'd expect it to start appearing on other regional stages in the coming years; it certainly deserves to be seen.

"The Random World" runs through April 10 at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, as part of the 40th Humana Festival of New American Plays.  For more information: actorstheatre.org.

Theatre quote of the day for Monday, June 3, 2013

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It is a hopeless endeavour to attract people to a theatre unless they can be first brought to believe that they will never get in. - Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby