McCarter Theatre’s “A Christmas Carol” is as welcome and delightful as the most charming perennial in the loveliest garden.
Year after year, since the late Nagle Jackson’s days, McCarter has celebrated the season by staging an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic. The script and production has changed several times. Simple and direct morphed into opulent or pageant-like. Mid-Victorian London came alive in sundry ways.
They all worked. McCarter’s “A Christmas Carol” should be viewed as an annual pleasure, an established tradition that never disappoints and propels one into the holiday spirit.
This year’s rendition, a general revival of last season’s, is adapted and directed by Laura Keating, who walks the Goldilocks course of not doing too much or too little, and stars Joel McKinnon Miller, whose Scrooge, excellent last year, is enhanced by subtle touches that make Scrooge more interesting and Miller’s performance stronger.
Keating is not one to overdo. She emphasizes the humanity of Dickens’ timeless and much produced tale yet has set designer Daniel Ostling turn the stage festive and holidayish when necessary.
Keating’s assured good taste puts Scrooge and the spirits leading him through Christmases past, present, and future in the foreground while using carols and musical passages as bumpers between scenes or to contrast differences in a young vs. a more wizened Scrooge. The joyful dance Ebenezer does at the Fezziwig celebration is a highlight of the show while giving the best concrete evidence of one truly merry Christmas before Jacob Marley’s “Bah! Humbug!” attitude influenced Scrooge otherwise.
Keating keeps things touching by making them more compact. Scenes at the Cratchit house meaningfully reveal all they should but do so efficiently,
Goldilocks again. Everything seems “just right,” never prolonged or beyond the richest dramatic purpose.
Keating’s staging keeps people involved in a familiar story. It may be too much to ask to make “A Christmas Carol” new, except perhaps for the younger people in the audience, but Keating and company keep fresh and engaging what could easily turn into beloved chestnut done by the numbers.
The large ensemble helps provide variation and some lovely moments.
The chorus sings beautifully, the carols in particular brightening the tone and exuding the Christmas spirit with which Dickens wants to imbue Scrooge.
Keating also provides small but amusing bits of theatrical business, such as having the two women soliciting Scrooge for holiday donations to London’s poor constantly encircle him and block his way as he tries to dodge them or turn them off with his famous “Are there no prisons, no workhouses” speech.
She also makes Tiny Tim’s entrance fun, hiding him so that Scrooge has to ask about “another child” before we see Tim.
I keep looking for synonyms, but “delightful” and “charming,” echoed from the first paragraph, keep dominating my thoughts.
They are the words that denote Keating’s production truly.
Joel McKinnon Miller and company create that delight and charm, seemingly without effort.
They provide a warmth that lingers even when the Christmas spirits are showing Scrooge some of the sadder, more difficult, more diffident moments of his life.
That is the beauty of this “A Christmas Carol.” It leavens you while not stinting on the dramatic or unhappy passages that give Dickens’ story such texture.
Keating and cast entertain and move you as appropriate so that Scrooge’s well-anticipated transformation from stingy curmudgeon to generous benefactor elicits a motion. I, for one, fought back a tear — why I do that I don’t know — when Scrooge rediscovers the ease he had as a young man and sheds the humbugging grouch to be a mensch.
Joel McKinnon Miller is a canny Scrooge. He begins his performance with gruff, off-hand, self-satisfyingly sarcastic treatment of his clerk, Cratchit, nephew Peter, street-corner solicitors, and housekeeper, Mrs. Dilber.
This is a Scrooge who has to be reckoned with, but will reckon with you via taunt, disapproval, and belittlement.
Miller makes Scrooge’s encounter with the ghost of his late and even harder partner, Jacob Marley, interesting by taking different attitudes towards the warning spirit’s presence.
Instead of one stance, Miller takes Scrooge through fear and disdain for the ghost before he settles into being a man listening to a friend tell his tale of woe and instructions for what Scrooge must do as he receives three visitors this Christmas Eve.
Miller reacting to situations enriches the McCarter production.
Last year, Miller played scenes in which the spirits showed his aspects of his life with stoicism. He let meetings with his sister, fiancée, nephew, and the Cratchits play out while he watched and remained dispassionate, like someone receiving information he would process later.
This year, Miller was much more active. His Scrooge, seeing his past, present, and future, sought to take part in the action. He responded emotionally to seeing his sister come to rescue him from a lonely Christmas during which only he remained at his school. He enjoys the dancing at Fezziwig’s and the easy merriment of his nephew’s Christmas gathering and has to be stopped by the spirits from participating.
The interaction works. It shows Scrooge humanizing from the beginning.
Miller is adept at moving from crushing meanness to outright silliness when the occasion warrants, so Scrooge’s transition has more facets and makes his journey more meaningful as well as more fun to watch.
The cast surrounding Miller adds so many touches, they create the mood of Christmastime London while showing how well Scrooge’s neighbors know him or contrast with him.
Keating, as playwright, extends Old Jo, the greedy pawnbroker, into a street peddler who, far from being tight with money, sells gifts from a pushcart at a discount to poorer people. Or just gives them free, so children of the needy will have presents they might otherwise be denied.
Gina Daniels makes Old Jo the wise but generous spirit Dickens wants Scrooge to be. She seems to know everyone in the shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral and their stations in life.
Almost a mayor of the vicinity, Daniels turns Jo into the dependable nice person of the parish. To her credit, Daniels doesn’t revert to Jo’s lip-licking greed when Mrs. Dilber arrives at her pawn shop with Scrooge’s curtains, rings and all. She remains humane, which adds to Daniels’ performance and portrayal of Jo as being basically decent.
JP Coletta is a magnanimous nephew, Fred, who is amused by his uncle’s disgruntled attitude towards Christmas and makes you believe he is a happy man who will continue to annually nag his uncle to at least share a cup of wassail at his home whether Scrooge brays at him or not.
Coletta is also brisk and full of life as the young Ebenezer enjoying Fezziwig’s parties and wooing Belle. He makes you see the time and the way Scrooge’s attitudes change from congenial to hard.
Lisa Helmi Johanson is graceful and appropriately tart as Fred’s wife. Kenneth DeAbrew keeps Bob Cratchit’s light and full of love for his family and life even in moments when he has to deal with Scrooge’s disdain or his memory of Tiny Tim (played adorably by Caryna Desai Shah).
Legna Cedillo, Andrea Goss, and Cameron Knight do well as the Christmas spirits, Knight doubling as an exuberant Fezziwig. Maria Habeeb is touching as Scrooge’s disappointed intended, Belle.
Daniel Ostling’s set, with St. Paul’s hovering in the background, moves from place to place with ease and always provides a sure sense of location. Linda Cho’s costumes are nicely Victorian, and Cho does makes a shrewd statement with the Ghost of Christmas Present’s fading dress.
A Christmas Carol, McCarter Theatre, 91 University Place, Princeton. Through Sunday, December 29. Showtimes are Wednesday through Friday, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 1 and 5:30 p.m.; Monday, December 23, 5:30 p.m.; and Tuesday, December 24, noon and 4 p.m. $33 to $98. www.mccarter.org or 609-258-2787.
The company of McCarter Theater’s ‘A Christmas Carol,’ which continues through Sunday, December 29. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.,
