Review: Trinity’s A Christmas Carol
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
It is never an enviable job.
For 34 years, Trinity Repertory has annually revived its holiday standard, A Christmas Carol. Much like a married couple digs out Aunt Esther's wedding gift every year when she stops by for the holidays, Trinity gets out that porcelain tchotchke that can, inevitably, feel frozen in time. Not to mention a bit dusty.
Of course, more can be done with a production than with a figurine, depending on the distance each year's director feels like casting from the original adaptation by founding director Adrian Hall and Richard Cummings.
But whether played straight with stalwart Scrooges like Timothy Crowe, played gender-confused during a period of Aunt Ebenezers, or played with rabid revisionism the year that Providence supplanted 1830s London as the setting (with yes, a Big Blue Bug), the crux of whether A Christmas Carol works is whether the audience can surrender and believe in the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge.
This year, in the hands of youth - a young director (Michael Perlman) a young Scrooge (Mauro Hantman), and an average cast age that felt significantly younger than the resident company demographic - the answer is not entirely clear.
Bold strokes
What youth does for this production, literally, is add color. Patrick Lynch's set is punctuated by doors of many colors, which give the play a bright, graphic-novel patina. Wildly rich costume colors saturate the production's palette like hitting a button in iphoto; this Christmas Carol pops, and that's a fresh pleasure. There is nothing more red than the robes worn by Rachael Ward as the ghost of Christmas Past, nor the periodesque (and delightful) top hats, velveteen coats, and glittery scarves of the Ghost of Christmas Present (twinned by Jude Sandy and Joe Wilson, Jr, in a slightly odd contrivance).
Overall, there is a lot of doubling and layering in this production, leaving nothing quiet. Songs both fill and bridge scenes, and when actors aren't singing, there's sound design filling in. The lighting design is bold, and often very effective. It's son et lumiere right on Washington Street, and it's a mostly modern spectacle (although Trinity's flying apparatus, now so visible amid more sophisticated technology, is feeling more like a Eugene Lee touch of retro).
Less-bold Scrooge
But what of Scrooge? Mauro Hantman may have gray hair brushed to Einsteinian excess, but he's young and looks, sounds, and acts it. His Scrooge uses volume for expression, and its hard to place where it's all grounded. He may be working to play opposite the well-recognized verbal and physical stylings of well-known Scrooges such as Crowe, but what's left is too neutral, and nearly bland. His giddiness, so awaited by well-versed audiences, pays off a bit, but even his howls of delight while standing astride his iron bed, feel forced.
Around Scrooge, the cast performs ably, but without as much color as the design they fill. Janice Duclos gives Mrs. Partlet a few wonderful physical turns, and Sandy and Wilson add some fun mugging to their job-sharing appearance as Scrooge's present in Stave III. Brandon Drea gives nephew Fred a boyish earnestness that works and Richard Williams as Cratchitt has a few sweet (but rare) moments of comedy. The kids are adorable and as diverse as a Benneton ad.
But there are odd discontinuity errors, like smudgy mistakes in a high schooler's last-minute term paper. Bob Cratchit pulls out a modern guitar for a sweet song by Tiny Tim. At the play's conclusion, Scrooge offers Fred and Cratchitt partnership in a newly realized firm. And was that a white cardigan, circa a Bing Crosby holiday special, on Belle's husband?
So at evening's conclusion, is this A Christmas Carol in the timeless tchotchke mold? No. Is it different? Visually, especially, yes. But more attention needs to return to the layering and nuance of character, even if we see them every year.
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