A toast to the season with a pair of Christmas Carols now onstage!
The meaning of Christmas is nowhere more movingly expressed than in Charles Dickens’ timeless fable about a man hardened to life but given a second chance to look back and open his heart to the love around him. Steven Maler’s Commonwealth Shakespeare Company has mounted a salted caramel of a production–A CHRISTMAS CAROL dark and sweet, wrapped in the sumptuous melodies of the season, and delivered in the splendid Emerson Cutler Majestic Theater by a veteran cast of virtuoso performers who frame the tale as group of wandering players. Trailer Here!
The distinguished Will Lyman is a Scrooge for the ages, so cantankerous we can’t help but laugh knowing what this Christmas eve has in store for him! He shoos away alms seekers (Kathy St. George is hilariously affronted!), and kicks his relentlessly cheerful nephew Fred (Jared Troilo) to the curb along with an armful of gifts and his annual invitation to Christmas dinner. But it’s Ebenezer’s humble employee Bob Crachit (Robert St. Laurence) who bears the brunt of his crochety boss’s ill will and trudges home to provide Tiny Tim and family with a meager but joyful Christmas repast.
What awaits Scrooge is a ghostly trip through the crossroads of time, illuminating the errors of his ways which have turned him into a crusty codger alone at Christmas with a bowl of gruel. What awaits us, is a moveable feast of costumes, spirits, and sets, all beautifully lit and wafting in and out from the wings and rafters. The action moves on waves of sound from a vast chorus of dazzling voices (Neal Ferreira, Laura McHugh especially) wrapping us in the warmth of the season. Merry-making musical numbers culminating in a full-on audience singalong will swell the hearts of the scroogiest among us– and that’s no humbug. SEE A CHRISTMAS CAROL at The EMERSON CUTLER MAJESTIC THROUGH DECEMBER 23 only with a very special ASL interpreter on Sunday, December 21 at 1:30pm – 10 year-old Dorothy Sheppard as Tiny Tim’s interpreter!
And don’t miss AN IRISH CAROL– Greater Boston Stage Company’s New England Premiere of Matthew Keenan’s contemporary update of the Dickens classic! As one theatergoer said to me on the way out of the performance, this is like a modern “Scrooge”! Indeed. A blisteringly icy Robert Walsh, just daunting as David the owner of a Dublin pub who blows in to open up shop on a frosty Christmas Eve; but the pub is not the only thing that needs opening up. David sends a chill down the spine of all who enter his space including his sweet-tempered Polish bartender Bartek (Alex Deroo), a freshly engaged couple who get into a spat (Julia Hertzberg/Alex Leondedis), David’s younger brother Michael (Alex M. Jacobs) and old pals Jim (Ross MacDonald) and Frank (Richard Snee) who knocks out the quips as easily as he knocks back the drinks.
When Richard (Paul Valley) a “ghost” from his past, suddenly walks in, David meets his match and is forced to face the fallout of decisions he made long ago, and examine the path his life has taken since. Director Weylin Symes and this superb ensemble enrich the production with real emotional weight, deepening this tale of redemption which Dickens delivered almost two centuries ago.
But there is warmth and humor in the darkness of every corner of this lived-in pub, which invites us to lean in and feel for a man who has turned a cold shoulder to life but who might just be able to unload his burden by the glow of a fire on this climactic Christmas Eve… ! See AN IRISH CAROL at GREATER BOSTON STAGE COMPANY before it closes this weekend through December 21! Come early for live Irish music and spirits!
