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New adaptations of Dicken’s A Christmas Carol have become something of a theatrical cottage industry in recent years and the Orlando Shakespeare Festival has been an eager consumer of its products. The goal seems to be to come up with a small-cast, low-budget alternative to the cast of thousands (okay, cast of dozens) approach that has prevailed for decades, complete with caroling Londoners and elaborate parties at the Fezziwigs. Last season The Festival produced the wonderful A Christmas Carol in Five Parts, a sort of post modernist, single-set, minimalist reworking. This year, it’s the world premiere of The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge, another one-set wonder, and this one shows signs of becoming a classic in its own right.
Playwright Mark Brown’s conceit is to set the play one year after the familiar events of Dicken’s tale. Scrooge, it seems, has suffered a relapse. Not only has he reverted to type as a perfectly foul old geezer, but he is seeking revenge in the form of a lawsuit against Jacob Marley and the three spirits of Christmas who made his life so miserable a year earlier. In a deliciously anachronistic twist on Scrooge’s money-grubbing nature, he is seeking unspecified damages for emotional distress, among other things.
The action unfolds in the courtroom of Judge Stanchfield R. Pearson, a judicial control freak with his own Scrooge-like propensities. Scrooge, ever the penny-pincher, is representing himself, while the defendants have engaged the unctuous services of Solomon Rothschild, a silver-tongued advocate with enough oiliness to fuel a second Hannukah miracle. (Rothschild’s Jewish heritage is a bit of a running gag in this Christmas tale.)
It’s hard to take with utter seriousness any courtroom drama that uses a procession of ghosts as the star witnesses. Yet the subject matter is undeniably serious. So do we play it straight or go for the laughs? Fortunately, both play and production strike exactly the right balance.
Playwright Brown has chosen to reach our hearts through our funnybones. Brown is apparently an underemployed actor (is there any other kind?) and like most actors turned playwright he brings an uncanny sense of what works on stage to the task. The director, Arlen Bensen, has encouraged the actors to get in touch with their inner hams and they have responded with alacrity, turning in some of the most delightfully cartoonish performances I have enjoyed in quite some time. Of course, any really good cartoon reveals a deep inner truth and Bensen’s actors never lose sight of the humanity within, which makes them all the funnier.
Brown’s Scrooge uses little plot inconsistencies in the Dicken’s version to telling effect when cross-examining his Christmas-eve tormentors, and the script allows us to flatter our intelligence as we laugh knowingly at gags that depend on our utter familiarity with this oft-told tale. But Brown is just softening us up for a final twist that comes as a surprise (at least to me) and gets us thinking all over again about the timeless wisdom of this sometime somber old chestnut.
This play is an actor’s dream and the production is graced by the most seamless ensemble that Festival audiences have seen in a long time. Everyone in the cast is a standout, several of them in multiple roles. Philip Nolen is a terrific Scrooge and J.D. Sutton doubles admirably as the Stan Laurel-esque Bob Cratchit and the tormented soul of Marley. The luscious Sarah Hankins scores as the gamin-ish Ghost of Christmas Past and the women in Scrooge’s life. Timothy Williams is wonderfully shticky as Scrooge’s nephew and the Ghost of Christmas Future, whose spectral rasp requires the services of a court-appointed translator who is fluent in “ghost.” Jeff Marlow as Rothschild may have the most difficult role since he spends most of his time setting up gags for the other players, but he pulls it off with aplomb and shines in his own right.
Perhaps best of all is Diana Brune, if only because most playgoers will never realize that she played four totally different (and often very funny) characters in the course of the evening.
If there’s any justice, The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge will enjoy a long life in regional theaters for many Christmas seasons to come. I’m sure the Shakespeare Festival would make many Orlandoans happy if they revive it every year. But you have a chance to see the world premiere production t hat started it all. Don’t miss it. The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge plays at the Orlando Shakespeare Festival through December 26, 2004. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7 pm, Friday and Saturday at 8 pm, and Sunday at 2 pm. Tickets are $20 to $35. For more information and tickets call 407-447-1700, extension 1, or visit their web site at www.shakespearefest.org.
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