SEASONAL GHOST
An Italian Christmas Carol transforms tale into something dreamlike that hits deep,
An Italian Christmas Carol
(out of 4) Created and written by Rory de Brouwer, Daniele Bartolini, Marissa Zinni and Raylene Turner. Directed by Daniele Bartolini. Until December 22 at a secret location in the Bloor West area. DLTExperience.com. Torontonians are spoiled for choice when it comes to holiday productions of A Christmas Carol this year — there’s the annual Soulpepper Theatre version, it’s the new annual winter production at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, and the Ross Petty pantomime gave its own clownish spin on the Dickens tale of a grumpy miser who’s reminded of the spirit of Christmas through ghostly visitations.
But while the appeal of this story can pack some of Toronto’s largest houses year after year, there’s another production that goes to the opposite extreme. An Italian Christmas Carol, produced by DopoLavoro Teatrale (DLT) in partnership with Istituto Italiano di Cultura, transforms the story into a dreamlike experience of an Italian immigrant alone at Christmas, and one audience member into the main role.
DLT, whose past productions in Toronto include the SummerWorks hit The Stranger and the Luminato Festival’s Off Limits Zone, specialize in productions designed for one audience member at a time, and imbue their stories and performances with surreal, otherworldly encounters. They’re like the theatrical equivalent of gaslighting, with artistic instead of malevolent intent. (When you’re the only audience member, there’s nothing or no one to remind you that what you’re experiencing is a perfor- mance.) So naturally, An Italian Christmas Carol plays up the spiritual aspects of the source material, and while doing so, underscores a sense of tragedy, loss and nostalgia that at times hits quite deep.
For the audience member, the play begins outside — a landlord (Raylene Turner) brings you to an empty apartment that’s being rented as the current tenant, a recent immigrant from Italy, is behind on rent.
As you explore the sparse basement apartment and uncover aspects of the tenant’s life (try to find the presence of Vittorio di Sica’s 1952 neorealist film Umberto D., a film about a man losing his home and his dignity in an unkind Italian city), you realize that this is not Ebenezer Scrooge’s story, but one told from the perspective that’s left out of A Christmas Carol — the powerless that Scrooge never acknowledges.
From that point, two spirits representing the tenant’s mother (Marissa Zinni) and father (Daniele Bartolini) bring the audience member through various fantastic worlds, speaking in Italian the way through, with a soft, nurturing affection (helped by a glowing scenic design by Anahita Dehbonehie).
They, and the audience member, demand a mutual vulnerability that’s challenging when the moments seem overly choreographed or heavy-handed, but beautiful when simple — helping a father get dressed, or lying on a bed with a mother, or trying desperately to hold on to some kind of connection to home when it’s put to its limits.
For so many Torontonians, family traditions are disrupted at this time of year, due to schedules, or distance, or imposing, oppressive societal rules. This Christmas Carol isn’t about someone who has lost the meaning of the holidays, but someone who knows more acutely than anyone and is restricted from expressing it.
That’s perhaps a timelier frame to this classic story that veers away from redeeming the powerful, and empowering individuals in their everyday life to celebrate family, be kind to each other, and yes, call your mother.