Scrooged to the ground

There’s a little Scrooge in all of us.
Charles Dickens original A Christmas Carol has remained in print since its publication in 1843 and has seen interpretations by everyone from Susan Lucci to Mr. Magoo. Maybe A Christmas Carol has endured so long because Scrooge speaks to the part of us that hates the holidays, even though Ebenezer eventually capitulates to them.
The work has existed as a performance piece nearly since its conception. “Dickens himself would go on lecture tours and read it, and there were several stage productions in his lifetime,” says Michael Kinghorne, dramaturg of the Alliance Theatre. Kinghorne adds that Dickens fought against the unauthorized versions that would appear on stage in America and elsewhere.
Now, with the book in public domain, any theater can adapt Carol with impunity, including the Alliance, which has staged the show for 11 years in a row. Presenting his multi-cultural adaptation for the second straight year, David H. Bell directs Chris Kayser in the role of the central skinflint.
The Alliance productions are known for the huge casts — the current one has nearly 30 — but the New American Shakespeare Tavern, tackling the play for the first time in its history, offers merely four. The Tavern’s concept is to have the players perform based on the script that Dickens would use when he read the story to party guests at Christmastime. Theatrical Outfit, for its part, economizes even further by having Tom Key perform all the parts for their one-man production. With yet another version being mounted by Village Playhouse in Roswell, you can arrange to see a different Scrooge four nights in a row.
And in fact, you can see more than that. Georgia Ensemble Theatre’s Uh-Oh, Here Comes Christmas! adapted from the works of Robert Fulghum, opens with five singing and dancing Scrooges. Neighborhood Playhouse’s Inspecting Carol depicts the behind-the-scenes mishaps when a troupe attempts a star-crossed staging of Carol. Funny... That Way’s latest production literally decks the halls with gay apparel with Bah Homo by Deb Calabria, which spoofs both the holidays and homophobia.
David Sedaris can be likened to a hip, urban Ebenezer in Santaland Diaries, which depicts his dreaded stint as an Elf at Macy’s. Horizon Theatre offers a reprise of last year’s production, with Harold Leaver returning to the pleasingly caustic role. Dad’s Garage brings back last year’s Chick & Boozy’s Fun Time Holiday Show, a goof on the celebrity-studded holiday specials of the 1970s, featuring all-new material (reportedly including a take on Siegfried and Roy).
PushPush Theater has staged a different holiday show four years running (beginning with Inspecting Carol three seasons ago), and this time, Holiday on Thin Ice features all-new short works by Murray Mednick and such local writers as Karen Wurl, Janece Shaeffer, Rob Nixon, Tim Habeger and R. Cary Bynum. Stone Mountain’s ART Station, also known for developing in-house holiday productions, premieres a mixture of song and storytelling with Voices of the Season.
Marietta’s Square Globe Theatre hopes to launch a new tradition with It’s a Wonderful Life, based on the Frank Capra film. Perennial holiday shows can be truly enduring, as shown by the reruns this year of such musical favorites as Jomandi’s Black Nativity, Aurora Theatre’s Christmas Canteen and Theatre in the Square’s The 1940s Radio Hour, being staged for a staggering 19th time. The Marietta theater will be presenting a second musical, The Sanders Family Christmas, on its Alley Stage.
Perhaps the most intriguing holiday show is Art Within’s Joyful Noise, a historical play about the tempestuous creation of Handel’s “Messiah,” which features the famed “Hallelujah Chorus” that inevitably finds its way into Yuletide pageants. Jewish Theater of the South even gets involved with the children’s show Hershel and the Hannukah Goblins.
A few shows with no holiday connection whatsoever, like Actor’s Express’ Loot (although who doesn’t want to find loot under the Christmas tree?). And, through an odd coincidence, the season sees two off-beat, original musical versions of Lewis Carroll, with Onstage Atlanta’s ALICE: In Wonderland recommended for mature audiences, and Jomandi’s Yo Alice, an urban, hip-hop treatment. It makes a kind of sense: like Carol, Alice is another piece of Victorian family literature, and this time of year, everybody feels like they’ve fallen down a rabbit hole.
Check Arts Agenda on page 47 for times and dates.