ORSON’S GHOST LACKS SPIRIT
‘Welles himself is far more interesting than the play’
Orson Welles’ Christmas Carol
The New Theatre, Dublin Until December 14 ★★
Orson Welles once remarked that he started at the top and worked his way downwards. He wasn’t totally wrong. It’s one of cinema’s great ironies that Welles, once regarded as the brightest, most versatile and exciting talent in cinema and the theatre, should have ended his performing life grossly overweight, sometimes sloshed, flogging wine and spirits in a series of TV commercials from 1978 until he was fired from them in 1981.
By his mid-twenties his radio work had made him a big name and his 1941 film Citizen Kane, when he was only 26, was arguably his greatest achievement.
In May 1938, aged 23, he broadcast his famous radio production of the HG Wells novel The War Of The Worlds, about Martians invading Earth. The story that it caused panic among New York citizens who started running for the hills, is pure hokum.
The play didn’t have a huge audience, it was plain from the broadcast that it was a drama, and the panic reports were an early instance of fake news. But it helped make Welles famous.
A few months later, in December 1938, Welles did an adaptation of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, which is the subject of a play being performed now at the New Theatre as a recreation of the original broadcast.
Christmas Carol didn’t cause a stir, because it was not nearly as good or as imaginative as War Of The Worlds (both productions are available online).
The production company, AboutFace Ireland, have taken on a mammoth task. Welles had a mellifluous baritone voice and an ability to create unforgettable characters. That’s the fatal absence in the production.
The play suggests briefly some of the things for which Welles was notorious: his constant changing of scripts, arguing with the cast, and being a pain to work with. When he was directing Laurence Olivier in London, Olivier told him to stay away because he was upsetting everyone. And he was regularly taking on new projects before he had finished what he was doing.
That’s hinted at in the final conversation in this play. It’s a pity more wasn’t made of it.
Welles himself is far more interesting than the play.
This production is presumably being played for laughs, contrasting the serious radio production with the behaviour of the originally unseen performers, which is not always credible. They have to take on the roles of distinguished actors like Welles himself, Joseph Cotten and Agnes Moorehead, while also creating characters from the novel, including the voice of Tiny Tim.
A major problem is that since we’re watching the making of a radio play, the normal use of light and scenery are not employed to create atmosphere. It’s all done with the voice.
The most important role, of course, is that of Welles, speaking as narrator and also as Ebenezer Scrooge. It’s a huge ask and Paul Nugent, who wrote the play, just doesn’t have the presence or the voice to do it. He fails to distinguish clearly between the voices of the narrator and of Scrooge, and Scrooge often sounds as if he’s scared stiff, when he’s at first sceptical about the ghosts, and is actually suffering acute remorse for his selfish life.
The rest of the cast make the most of the script, but the production fails to create either the atmosphere of A Christmas Carol or a credible comic sense of the behind-the-scenes confusion to make it a proper comedy. It is a good idea that doesn’t quite work on stage, although I heard several audience members saying they enjoyed it.
nAlso playing December 19 at The Whale Theatre, Greystones, Co. Wicklow