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Wednesday, March 27, 2024
Shaw review: Unique Christmas Carol is a wintertime treat

Editor's note: This story has been updated to clarify that Sanjay Talwar is playing the role of Christmas Present and Peter Fernandes portrays Scrooge's nephew Fred. The roles were originated by Jeff Meadows and Jonathan Tan respectively.

Mike Keenan

Special to The Lake Report

The Shaw Festival’s impressive resources are on full display in Tim Carroll’s third winter version of “A Christmas Carol” at the appropriately Victorian-like setting of the Royal George Theatre.

Kevin Lamotte’s lighting is evocatively impeccable; Paul Sportelli’s music, spot on; puppetry and movement by Alexis Milligan, incredible; and the overall design by Christine Lohre, imaginatively sparse and innovative such that actors act as human props serving as desk and door.

At the beginning and end, festive actors mix with the appreciative audience, singing merry Christmas carols and throwing paper snowballs, their gentle, parabolic arcs gradually descending into nasty fastballs as with any children at play.

An informative festival program includes interesting notes on Dickens by Carroll as well as director Molly Atkinson’s production take-along with pictures of the cast in action.

One full-page picture depicts Bernard Shaw with this quote: “I am sorry to introduce the subject of Christmas … It is an indecent subject; a cruel, glutinous subject; a drunken disorderly subject; a wasteful disastrous subject; a wicked, cadging, lying, filthy, blasphemous, and demoralizing subject. Christmas is forced on a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press…” (Did you look up “cadging” in the dictionary? I did.)

Bernard Shaw captures the essence of Ebenezer Scrooge, played by a youngish Michael Therriault, as he is visited by three Christmas ghosts who help him understand the importance of charity in the holiday season. Therriault is excellent in his depiction, but I prefer an older curmudgeon with more caustic “hum-bugs” as with Soulpepper’s Joseph Ziegler who plays Scrooge in their 13th season in Toronto’s Distillery District.

Nonetheless, Shaw’s production is spectacular, with neat idiosyncrasies such as Lohre’s Advent Calendar, equipped with little doors à la TV’s “Laugh-In” that pop open for myriad visual treats throughout the show.

The daunting ghost of Scrooge’s former business partner, Jacob Marley, drags heavy chains and sets the scene for three more spirits. Sarena Parmar as Christmas Past, sits Scrooge on a pendulous swing while he reflects on his early life decision to forgo human companionship for money.

Sanjay Talwar is hilarious as Christmas Present, bounding about the set on roller skates and painfully punning on the word “present.” Puppets are employed cleverly to help illustrate Scrooge’s past, and the enormous, imposing, swirling Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is simply dazzling as it projects eerily well into the audience.

Graeme Somerville inadvertently got the play off on a humorous note when, with his thundering voice, he forgot the stage name of his actual wife, Marla McLean (Mrs. Cratchit). Somerville is shunned by Scrooge when seeking donations for the poor. Peter Fernandes plays a contrasting, jovial Fred (Scrooge’s nephew), while Patty Jamieson as Scrooge’s maid, Mrs. Dilber, doubles convincingly as his desk.

In the end, thanks to the four ghosts, Scrooge is transformed into a kinder, gentler man, offering the audience the possibility of redemption and hope in a world that currently seems bleakly divided between rich and poor. Carroll provides us with much-needed tonic for the soul. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

In 1849, Dickens began public readings of his story, which led to 127 further performances until 1870, the year of his death. “A Christmas Carol” has never been out of print and has been translated into several languages, the story adapted many times for film, stage, opera and other media.

“A Christmas Carol” plays at the Shaw Festival’s Royal George Theatre until Dec. 22.

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