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by Matt Murray & Jeremy Diamond, directed by Tracey Flye

Ross Petty Productions, Elgin Theatre, Toronto

November 30, 2017-January 5, 2018

“Yeah I know I let you down.

Is it too late to say sorry now?” (Justin Bieber, 2015)

On the evening I attended Ross Petty Productions’ first-ever staging of A Christmas Carol, comic Eddie Glen asked an eight-year-old boy on stage what he liked most about the show.  “The music”, he replied without hesitation.  “Smart little kid”, thought I, “He got that right”.  The main and perhaps only reason to see Ross Petty’s new panto is the music which is especially well sung and choreographed.  Dickens’s story, however, is a shambles and only people who already know it will have any clue about what is supposed to be happening.  Writers Matt Murray and Jeremy Diamond hardly give us even the bare bones of the story and they add so many differences, diversions and digressions that the story comes close to making no sense at all.  The show is thus best regarded as a kind of musical review with jokes rather than any kind of storytelling theatre.

Publicity materials claim that the tale is shifted to London, Ontario, in the 1850s with Scrooge (Cyrus Lane) unaccountably the only character sporting a British accent.  Yet, Dana Osborne’s costumes place some of the characters in archetypal British Victorian garb and others in the 21st-century.  Besides a major prop involved in the plot is the hand-held “talking box” (i.e. smartphone) and so much else is anachronistic that the time and place of the setting is almost irrelevant. 

Scrooge is still the employer of Bob Crachit (Eddie Glen in his 15th Petty panto), but this Crachit is not Scrooge’s clerk but rather the organizer of a carolling quartet called The Humbugs who sing in the streets to raise money for charity, although that money goes directly into Scrooge’s own money bags that lie in piles in his bedroom.  One of these he calls Tiny Tim and it’s the only Tiny Tim in the show.

When Scrooge goes to pay his employees, he pays Bob noticeably more than Bob’s daughter Jane (A.J. Bridel), who also works for him.  She complains about unequal wages for women and decides to go on strike.  While on her lonely strike the only one who pays her any attention is a new boy in town named Jack (Kyle Golemba), who is a wrapper.  Cue continual puns since he doesn’t rap songs but wraps Christmas presents.  The only strange thing about Jack is that he has come to London hoping to work for Scrooge. 

Finally, after this long introduction with its extreme contortions to change Dickens’s sad old man into a supervillain bent on world domination, Scrooge sleeps and is visited by the the ghost of his former partner Jacob Marley.  Some may wonder why Marley wears dreadlocks and speaks in a Jamaican accent and given the audience reaction the penny never did drop.  The writers have assumed we’ll immediately connect Jacob Marley with Bob Marley.  That’s why he says he’s trapped in perpetual limbo (geddit?).   

Following his prediction that Scrooge will be visited by three ghosts, everyone’s favourite Petty panto character Plumbum (Dan Chameroy, after a break last year) appears.  It turns out that she is really all three ghosts – Christmas Past, Present and Future – rolled into one gaudy package.  At this point three female “Ghostdusters” (Jennifer Mote, Judy Kovacs, Genny Sermonia) break in having had a call about supernatural activity.  Obviously, it’s a joke enough to include this reference to last year’s all-female remake of the 1984 all-male original, but the writers flail about trying to fit their presence into the plot.  After all, they can hardly take out Plumbum because Scrooge’s journey through his life hasn’t even begun. 

The plot continues in this confusing slapdash way until the end, trying to weave in a love plot between Jane and Jack with more Ghostdusters, the evil Christmas Crunch game and more until we reach the graveyard scene which given the writers’ turn of mind becomes an occasion for a rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” complete with zombies.  At least the writers manage one good twist on the standard Dickens plot that helps pull their compilation of distractions together.

Panto, of course, requires a completely different style of acting from ordinary plays.  The actors play characters all the time self-aware that they are acting and have an audience that will react vocally, if need be, to what they do.  It’s clear who in the ensemble has had previous panto experience – A.J. Bridel, Dan Chameroy, Eddie Glen and Kyle Golemba – because of the very outgoing style they adopt that is directed almost more to the audience than it is to the other actors.  All four brighten up the show through the sheer force of their strong personalities, though strangely the writers haven’t given Plumbum as much to do as usual or anything very witty to say. 

Cyrus Lane, who is best known for his very reserved performances at Stratford, shows that he has a previously hidden outgoing side to his personality too.  The problem is that he is consistently outshone when any of the other four are on stage with him.  Lane does have the makings of a panto villain.  He can ad lib and he relishes all the booing.  The only difficulty is that he seems to be enjoying himself a bit too much and forgets to add the kind of extreme disdain for the audience that Ross Petty dished out so well and that only made the boos louder. 

What saves the show, as noted  by the perceptive eight-year-old boy quoted above, is its music.  The plot, fraying and patched together as it is, serves mostly as a kind of clothesline on which the creators have strung a series of stellar musical performances.  These include Cyrus Lane’s cover of the 1959 song “Money (That’s What I Want)”, very appropriate for Scrooge; Stevie Wonder’s 1974 song “Don’t You Worry ‘bout a Thing” well sung by Kyle Golemba; Donna Summer’s “She Works Hard for The Money” strongly performed by A.J. Bridel; and Shawn Mendes’s recent hit “There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back” peppily sung as a duet by Bridel and Golemba;

Although the writers have made so much of the Jacob Marley/Bob Marley parallel, they strangely never give David Lopez a reggae tune.  Instead he gets the biggest summer hit of 2017 “Despacito”, which he hits out of the ballpark with such verve that it duly wins the greatest applause of the night.  Besides the fine redo of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller led by Dan Chameroy in the cemetery scene, are such crowd-pleasers unrelated to the plot as the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” from 1978 and the Isley Brothers’ “Shout” from 1959.  One mistake is to have the repentant Scrooge at the end speak the words to Justin Bieber’s 2015 song “Sorry” without letting Cyrus Vance actually break into song.  

If we realize that the present panto is really only a review of pop songs old and new very loosely tied to Dickens’s tale, it can be enjoyed as a pleasant enough family entertainment and, overall, is more successful than was the first Ross Petty-less panto Sleeping Beauty last year.  At least this year the writers included more audience interaction which is really what pantos are all about. 

When Eddie Glen as Bob asks the audience if he should give his invention to Scrooge, they responded with a deafening “No!”  When Bob ignores this advice and bad things happen, the children feel validated in having viewed the situation correctly, unlike the adults on stage, and that in turn helps bolster their confidence in their own judgment.  Telling a well-known story more clearly and with fewer digressions and engaging the audience more directly in making judgements on the action will help bring Ross Petty’s pantos closer to their original form and back to their original appeal.

       

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photos: (from top) Cyrus Lane as Scrooge and Dan Chameroy as Plumbum; Cyrus Lane as Scrooge; David Lopez (centre) with ensemble; Kyle Golemba as Jack and A.J. Bridel as Jane. ©2017 Racheal McCaig.

For tickets, visit www.rosspetty.com.