"Scrooge" provides faithful adaptation of Dickens' classic
17 November 2004When did we start giving Thanksgiving the shaft?
Here we have a holiday made up of turkey, football, canned cranberries and other wonderful things, and people can’t wait to hustle it off the calendar so they can get to Christmas.
Turkey Day is getting no respect at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center, where the musical "Scrooge" with Richard Chamberlain is playing through Sunday.
Just 10 days before the official opening of Christmas shopping season (also known as the day after Thanksgiving), the PAC is teaching the old seasonal lessons about loving your loved ones and being kind to strangers directly from the good book. No, not that good book, the book that launched a thousand yuletide cliches, Charles Dickens’ "A Christmas Carol."
"Scrooge" is a perfectly decent adaptation of the 1970 film starring Albert Finney and Alec Guinness.
The story, for those who have been buried next to Jacob Marley for the past 150 years, concerns a greedy businessman who learns the errors of his ways after being visited by ghosts of Christmases past, present and future. (Too bad the spirit world didn’t get involved with the Enron folks, but the timeliness of greed keeps this story fresh.)
What can you say about this show? The Dickens story is like a knock-knock joke that stopped being funny long ago, but you still want to hear it because familiarity breeds comfort.
What sets this version apart is the music, but just barely. Scrooge has more friends than composer Leslie Bricusse has memorable songs in his rather ordinary score.
With minimal choreography by Lisa Kent, the numbers exist only to further the story, but since everyone and their grandmother already know Dickens by heart, they end up clinking and clanking along redundantly. The exceptions are two songs that break from the saccharine tone: the funny dead man march 'Make the Most of this World' and the bitterly ironic 'Thank You Very Much.'
Since Scrooge is a role that practically plays itself, it goes without saying the old pro Chamberlain holds down the fort ably. But he has a tough go of it early on when he has little to do except scowl every 'Bah humbug!' like the world’s most pompous dinner theater actor.
At first, Chamberlain's habit of talking through every song is off-putting, but it ends up being an appropriate choice. Why should an old coot like Scrooge have a booming voice?
The familiar mechanisms of Dickens' story begin to take hold once the spirits make their spooky appearances. (Illusionist and "Harry Potter" vet Paul Kieve has designed some nifty switcheroos.) Only the most poisonous miser will have dry eyes at show's end, when a transformed Chamberlain gets a hug from poor Tiny Tim, who says poignantly, "God bless us everyone."
Like you didn’t know that was going to happen.
© 2004 Steven Hyden
