*Note: As per the performance eligibility requirements as laid out at https://hractawards.com/performance-eligibility/, this play is not up for HRACT Award consideration, as it only played for two weekends.

Who doesn’t love a good interpretation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol?  We usually see at least one version a year – last year, we really enjoyed Williamsburg Players’ rendition.  This year, Smithfield Little Theatre caught our eye when they announced they would be doing a slightly different take on the story, presenting Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol.  In this version, we see the same well known story play out, but instead, through the eyes of Jacob Marley, that ghost-turned-doorknocker who has traveled through time and space to save his partner Scrooge from the eternal damnation that is Marley’s fate.

It feels risky to add characters to a beloved classic like A Christmas Carol, and as an actor, you definitely have to approach such a role with confidence.  Luckily, Kaiti Edwards, playing Bogle (an after-life Jiminy Cricket of sorts for Marley), brings the necessary self-assurance to the role to pull it off.  She shares the stage for almost the entire play with Marley, played by Kelly Flick, and their chemistry is strong, such that Bogle’s pestering, bothering, and ultimately, assisting of Marley feels totally natural.  Flick, for her part, pulls off Marley’s grim and greedy, in-it-for-himself attitude with aplomb.  She also makes Marley’s development as a character feel real, as he struggles with inward conflict over forgiveness and what is, or should have been, important to him.

I really enjoyed how this play is written, in that the characters are constantly bouncing between dialogue lines and lines where they are basically narrating their own actions.  This feels like it could cause whiplash for the audience and confusion over what is narrated and what is spoken, but the actors here (with the help of director Nina Martin) do a nice job of weaving the story such that there is hardly even a thought to this.  The narration also allows for a simpler set, no special effects necessary in the underworld that Marley inhabits, and limited props.  Smithfield Little Theatre, with Jeff Corriveau leading the scenic design, clearly did not want to gyp their audiences, and still provided us with a really cool and interesting set to look at, which was immediately indicative of somewhere between worlds. 

The narrated lines also provide the performers with an opportunity to speak their motivations, and thus, rather than having to convey their motivation through actions, they can focus their acting on the emotion of the moment.  This is something that John Post, playing Scrooge, really excels at.  Post, who we’ve greatly enjoyed in supporting roles in Pippin at LTN and in She Loves Me here at SLT, plays a bit more nuanced of a part here, and really shines, as his Scrooge is crueler than most, is more stuck in his ways than most, and ultimately, has a more believable change of heart than most.  Shout out as well to the wardrobing by Meg Murray – Post is a college student, but he had a very believable old Scrooge look to him when fully costumed.

We would be remiss to not discuss the performance of Joey Pendleton, who flipped in and out of at least eight different roles throughout the play.  He successfully slipped himself from the foreboding Record Keeper, to the jolly Fezziwig, to the meager Cratchit, and back again, all in the course of two hours.  A very impressive feat indeed.

The best stories exist to teach us something about the human experience.  The original A Christmas Carol reminds us to keep mankind as our business.  This version emphasizes to us to not wait until it is too late to do so. 

Happy holidays HRACT readership – we are looking forward to an exciting year of plays and musicals ahead!