Rep’s new ‘Carol’ plenty spooky
Wainwright among standouts in every role
It’s clear from the start that Mark Clements’ new Milwaukee Repertory Theater adaptation of “A Christmas Carol” — which opened Friday night in the Pabst Theater — will be nothing like the solemn, carol-stuffed predecessor by Joseph Hanreddy and Edward Morgan.
Instead of beginning with tiny pinpricks of light, from a cast softly singing Christina Rossetti’s poem remembering a bleak midwinter, we’re greeted by the all-in duo of Angela Iannone and Michael Doherty, whipping us into a frenzy.
Standouts in every role all night, they begin by giving us a rudimentary and rousing lesson in audience participation, encouraging us to respond to an evening’s worth of questions. Most of them come from Jonathan Wainwright’s Scrooge, asking that we confirm or deny with a “yes” or a “no” whether the visions unfolding on stage are ghostly imaginings or really happening.
One might well wonder, when that unfolding involves Todd Edward Ivins’ striking set: A dark-hued London city made of vertical panels, turning like the pages of a storybook on a double turntable that allows seamless transitions from, say, Scrooge’s counting house to his bedroom.
That set also uses a ton of real estate on the small Pabst stage. As a result, several scenes, including the Fezziwig and Fred Christmas parties, feel pinched. Ditto the period dances that provided gorgeous visual accompaniment to the past adaptation’s carols, largely reduced or replaced here by John Tanner’s cinematic, dramatically atmospheric score.
The frequently claustrophobic nooks and crannies in Ivins’ set match the equally shrunken, feardriven contours of Scrooge’s mind. Those closed-in spaces also allow the ghosts and spirits haunting that mind to loom even larger, particularly when assisted by plenty of fog and Jeff Nellis’ spooky lighting design, big on ghastly greens and purples.
Cue the theme music for Jonathan Smoots — looking every inch a zombie — as the scariest Marley I’ve seen. Deborah Staples is also a creepier, less elegiac version of the Ghost of Christmas Past. Chiké Johnson doesn’t fare as well as the Ghost of Christmas Present — partly because Clements’ script gives shorter shrift to post-intermission scenes involving the Present and Future.
One wonders whether that’s a conscious choice, involving a Scrooge who is already well on his way to enlightenment by the time Staples and the past take their leave.
Even in his earliest, most curmudgeonly moments, this Scrooge is already softening; Wainwright clearly wants to shake the extended hand of Doherty’s Fred when the latter visits the counting house. Always a warm actor and a comparatively young Scrooge, Wainwright is more accessible — and susceptible — to outside influences. That’s among the reasons Smoots’ Marley gets under his skin.
But because this Scrooge sees the light so early, the end stages of his journey can feel both rushed and anticlimactic, robbing Christmas morning of some of its glory. There are compensating virtues, including falling snow and a lovely new song by Tanner, urging us to count our blessings. Watching any version of the Rep’s “Carol,” I always do.