Reviews 2017
Reviews 2017
✭✭✭✭✩
adapted and directed by Dennis Garnhum
Grand Theatre, Spriet Stage, London
December 1-30, 2017
Belle to Scrooge: “You fear the world too much”
Dennis Garnhum’s first production as the new ArtisticDirector of London’s Grand Theatre is his own adaptation of Charles Dickens’s classic tale, A Christmas Carol. Garnhum premiered the show in 2011 when he was Artistic Director of Theatre Calgary. Recreated now in London the show is highly theatrical and is the largest the Grand has every staged. Rather than an intimate drama of one morally compromised man’s confrontation with his conscience, Garnhum’s version is primarily a holiday spectacle anchored with fine performances from the entire cast.
We should see that Garnhum is going for the big rather than the small when the show begins with words projected the curtain one by one as Christopher Newton’s voice intones the opening lines of the story. That opening is followed, unlike all other adaptations, with a depiction of Jacob Marley’s funeral in which Marley (Patrick Monaghan) steps out of his casket and wanders off into the darkness. There isn’t really any reason to dramatize Marley’s funeral except for the surprise of its conclusion.
Many of Garnhum’s effects are fantastic as when Marley’s ghost appears on Scrooge’s door as happens in the novella. Some are quite inventive as when the Ghost of Christmas Past (Brendan McMurtry-Howlett ) shows Scrooge (Benedict Campbell) his home town from a height which is represented by a small girl pulling a model of town buildings behind her like a toy train. And some are simply pleasures to watch such as the skating scenes in the second act where actors glide across the stage dodging snowbanks. Even the scene changes for Allan Stichbury’s complex set are fun with some elements rising from the floor, some flown downwards while others are pushed in from the back and sides. It’s like a puzzle being taken apart and a new one being set in place.
Yet, not all of Garnhum’s design decisions make sense. When Marley’s Ghost first appears in Scrooge’s bedroom he is accompanied by five or six other ghosts also bearing chains. Not only do we not know who these people are but their presence undermines the solitariness of Marley’s death by showing that he has company in the afterlife. The Ghost of Christmas Past has green LED lights strung around his wig rather than the jet of flame Dickens describes. The Ghost of Christmas Present (Blythe Wilson) is a great departure from John Leech’s original illustrations. For unknown reasons, costume designer Kelly Wolf has made all the hoops of her tight corset and sheer skirt into circles of green LED lights. When she puts on her long green robe she looks rather like a live Christmas tree. As for the silent Ghost of Christmas Future (David Michael Moote ) perched on hidden stilts, he looks less like the Grim Reaper as in the original illustrations than giant Jawa from Star Wars.
Dickens did call his tale A Christmas Carol and even divided it not into chapters by “staves” and some carols are quoted in the text. Garnhum’s adaptation adds over a dozen Christmas carols to the production. Some are used to great effect as when a small boy (Justin Eddy) sings “Silent Night” during Marley’s funeral or when Mr. Fezziwig’s ball, set in his brewery, is replaced by a manic acrobatic rendering of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” with actors scrambling up and down ladders while they sing. And the Austrian carol “Still, Still, Still” sung by the whole cast is a fine way to create a transition from the stage spectacle to the calm of the everyday (even if the carol was first published 22 years after the novella).
The cast is made up of top-notch actors from the Stratford and Shaw Festivals and from London itself. In the first scenes, Benedict Campbell portrays Scrooge as a cynical narrow-minded old man by using a growling voice and gestures only to shoo people away. As the three Ghosts of Christmas show him his life, Campbell shows Scrooge struggling within himself between his habitual irritation and a growing perception of the good man he used to be and could be again. Campbell may go overboard in depicting Scrooge’s new-found glee – a deep feeling of inner happiness would be more satisfying – but Campbell leaves no doubt that Scrooge has turned his world view around 180º degrees.
In Garnhum’s adaptation, Scrooge’s nephew Fred comes across as a much more salient figure than Scrooge’s clerk Bob Crachit. Aidan deSalaiz views Scrooge’s permanent state of anger as a character flaw to be humoured and holds out hope that it can be cured with kindness. The measured language and gentle manners deSalaiz gives Fred make him the play’s prime representative of the Christian notion of repaying ill treatment with good.
The four ghosts who visit Scrooge give them each distinct personalities. Patrick Monaghan, as Jacob Marley, makes Scrooge’s deceased business parter more like the Ghost of Hamlet’s father than I have ever seen before, a spirit in torment who warns Scrooge to avoid the fate he suffers. Brendan McMurty-Howlett makes the Spirit of Christmas past a whimsical creature who seems to delight in showing Scrooge that he was once a boy full of dreams of adventure. Blythe Wilson, as the Ghost of Christmas Present, is more ambiguous. She matter-of-factly reveals to Scrooge what people really think of him though she cannot entirely disguise a tone of criticism. When she shows Scrooge what will happen to her and her children Want and Ignorance, Wilson takes on the oracular tone of tragedy. Fortunately, since Wilson is so fine a singer, Garnhum gives this Ghost a parting carol to sing which, as expected, she performs beautifully. As the mute Ghost of Christmas Future, David Michael Moote does not have much to do except to appear menacing and this he does very well.
The most important interaction Scrooge has with anyone on this journey through his life is with Belle, the woman he might have married. As Belle, Alexis Gordon passionately depicts a woman torn between a lingering love for the man Scrooge once was but an abhorrence for the man who has allowed the love of money to take over his life.
This combined set of strong performances provides the play with a fundamentally human core that sometimes seems to struggle to break out from the emphasis on spectacle in which Garnhum has conceived his presentation. Theatre Calgary holds the title in Canada of presenting A Christmas Carol for the greatest number of years in a row – ever since 1989 – and it is still presents Dennis Garnhum adaption despite his departure. Like Handel’s Messiah or Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, A Christmas Carol is often the one work of live performance that a family is likely to see in a year. The hope with all three seasonal pieces is that the enjoyment of that live performance will spill into a general love for other works.
A Christmas Carol is really an intimate play, a study of an internal change of heart, for which Garnhum frequently uses dialogue drawn directly from Dickens’s text. Garnhum’s decision to transform this intimate drama into a grand spectacle will likely draw greater numbers of people to the theatre than a sparser retelling since Garnhum makes certain to show off virtually the entire repertory of stage effects that the Grand Theatre is capable of, many of which surprised even me. If this draws people to live theatre it will be all to the good. Yet, in most plays the spectacle is not about a wide range of theatrical effects but about the spectacle of actors miraculously inhabiting characters and drawing us into the world they create with their words and movements. This type of spectacle also exists in Garnhum’s adaptation and one can only hope that audiences will be drawn to love the theatre as much by the story that his actors tell so well as by all the effects with which he has embellished it.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Benedict Campbell as Scrooge and Patrick Monaghan as Marley’s Ghost; Mr. Fezzigwig’s Ball; Owen Barteet as Tiny Tim and Sean Arbuckle as Bob Crachit. ©2017 Claus Andersen.
For tickets, visit www.grandtheatre.com.
2017-12-08
A Christmas Carol