This story is featured in CityBeat's Nov. 15 print edition.
Since 1991 an adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park has been a holiday tradition with local audiences. It’s been around long enough that kids who saw it 30 years ago now have their own kids to witness the redemption of Ebenezer Scrooge by three spirits on Christmas Eve. Dickens’s story has been around since 1843, published just before Christmas Day. Within a few weeks — and without copyright protection — there were at least five different theatrical adaptations at Victorian playhouses. That number has expanded exponentially over the past 180 years, and there’s scarcely a city in America where a theater isn’t staging an adaptation in December. By and large, each one is by a different adapter. The Playhouse’s beloved production for nearly three decades was by Howard Dallin. But this year, while the story will be familiar, there’s a new adaptation, put together by producing artistic director Blake Robison.
In a recent conversation with CityBeat in Robison’s office at the Playhouse, he offered several explanations. “The practical reason is the Playhouse’s new mainstage necessitates one. The old set was built for the Marx’s thrust stage. Now we have a proscenium. It’s literally not possible to just pick up the old production and plop it into the new theater. Additionally, the Rouse Theatre has all these new technological possibilities. That’s exciting. We want to bring the story to life in a way that takes advantage of all the new wizardry we have.”
Robison also has philosophical reasons. “All the great stories deserve to be readdressed. I understand anyone who might wonder or worry about that. Part of my job is to reassure people that it’s still the same story. We are still treating it in a traditional way. Most people want it set ‘in the time.’ And of course it is.” He mentions that on Facebook he recently read someone’s fear, “I hear they’re making it modern!” he said, “That’s a terrible idea! My hope is that this production presses the refresh button on things we’ve always loved about this story.”
“It’s a new adaptation, but every adaptation of Christmas Carol that I know tells the same story,” Robison pointed out. “It has the same characters, and eighty percent of the dialogue, if not more, comes straight from Dickens. All the famous lines are there — Dickens wrote them, and they end up in everyone’s adaptation.”
Robison adapted several novels for the stage earlier in his career, so he took this project on personally and spent about a year crafting the narrative for the stage. That occasionally meant writing dialogue for characters, such as clerk Bob Cratchit’s family, that Dickens wrote more as narrative. But as the production’s creator and stage director he has his own take on some of the story’s key elements.
“When I’m working on family-friendly plays,” Robison says, “I always enjoy a puppet element. Going back to my production of Peter and the Starcatcher. Over the past 10 years we’ve seen some amazing use of puppetry onstage,” he points to the Broadway examples of War Horse and more recently Life of Pi, featuring “theatricality brought to life by puppeteers.” In fact, Robison has engaged Betsy Rosen, who brought Life of Pi’s tiger to life, to oversee Christmas Carol’s puppets.
“When you’re looking at Christmas Carol, one of the fundamental questions in designing the show are who are the ghosts? What do they look like?” Robison and his designers used their imaginations to enhance each ghost with puppetry. “That makes it extra-theatrical, extra-accessible to a young audience. Kids see a lot of that. So I hope it makes it even more fun, more accessible for a younger generation.”
Christmas Past will be a sort of arctic winter ghost accompanied by a flock of white albino birds. Christmas Present is more traditional, a sort of Father Christmas with the green robe and the crown and the cornucopia of food, “but he has a sort of snow leopard puppet.” Without going into details he added, “I’ll just say that the Ghost of Christmas Future is very impressive and theatrical.”
Another tweak will be music. The Playhouse’s previous adaptation used quick snippets of familiar Christmas carols. Now Robison has added eight or nine familiar songs performed with at least a verse and a chorus. “It’s a way to celebrate the season,” Robison explained. “They are appropriate to the scenes, create a tone or a mood, or a comment on character.”
Playing Scrooge will be Andrew May, a veteran professional who embodied detective Hercule Poirot in the Playhouse’s 2022 production of Murder on the Orient Express. Local professionals Ryan Gilreath and Kelly Mengelkoch will again be the Cratchits as they were in the past, but Robison has reached out to more local professionals who will be new to the production, especially Ken Early and Burgess Byrd who will embody the jolly Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig.
He promises a big, fantastic set, full of Victorian details, and a cast wearing 100 new costumes, all traditional and period-appropriate. Robison is fascinated with the passage of time, so a large clock dominates the set, designed by Broadway veteran Wilson Chin. “I love this idea that Scrooge has one night to complete his lesson, at 1 a.m., 2 and 3. There is a sense of urgency since he’s trying to make up for 60-some years of miserly life. I wanted to bring that out.”
The clock is presently ticking as the production is readied for its Nov. 24 opening. It’s a safe bet that the tradition of A Christmas Carol at the Cincinnati Playhouse will continue for many holiday seasons to come.
A Christmas Carol, presented by Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, will be onstage at Mo & Jack’s Place – The Rouse Theatre from Nov. 24-Dec. 30. Info: cincyplay.com.
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