A Christmas Carol: a wise fool's tale

Christmas doesn’t get more traditional than Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, one of the theatre’s choice rants against greed.

In some ways the story of Ebenezer Scrooge has become a cliché. Yet every year thousands flock to the Citadel Theatre to see a production that fosters goodwill among men, not just at Christmas, but also through the seasons.

Animating A Christmas Carol year after year is a tough job, yet artistic director Bob Baker keeps it fresh with a few tweaks, several fresh faces and a brisk pace.

Perhaps some of the biggest credit should go to costume and set designer Leslie Frankish. Her revolving stage brings out 19th century London’s nostalgic warmth in counterpoint to the moveable pieces that emphasize the cruel chill of poverty.

Tackling the role of Scrooge is no easy matter. After all, the old penny-pincher is angry, bitter and mean, a man who shuts love and compassion out of his heart.

“Christmas is a cheat perpetuated by greedy merchants to line their pockets,” he rails at one point. And so he spends his days wallowing in loneliness.

Taking this warped personality to a stage of enlightenment and transformation without turning into a caricature requires a top tier actor and James MacDonald carries it off to perfection.

As one of a handful of actors not carrying double or even triple roles, MacDonald’s Scrooge is at first quite sickeningly odious. Yet MacDonald hits every beat in Scrooge’s transformation and gives us a rounded believable man that has gone through a life-changing event.

This year Jamie Williams replaced Julien Arnold as Bob Cratchit, and with his crooked grin added a delightful comedic element to the character.

John Kirkpatrick returns as the anguished spirit of Jacob Marley. As a man who never left the counting houses, Marley is doomed to wander for eternity. In a booming voice Kirkpatrick, delivers an impassioned soul-charged speech that sends goose bumps down the spine.

There are many other fine performances ranging from Belinda Cornish’s Mrs. Cratchit, a loving mother and bit of an outspoken feminist to Lyle McIlwraith-Black’s heart wrenching Youngest Scrooge, a lonely boy permanently left at a boarding school after his mother’s death.

And then there are the three spirits whose magical presence elicits a variety of responses from serenity to outright terror.

Not to be forgotten are the hard-working children representing the various classes of Christmases gone, present and to come.

Clever, caustic and credible, A Christmas Carol runs at the Citadel Theatre until Wednesday, Dec. 23.