It wouldn’t be easy for many of us to get through a holiday season without seeing at least one version of A Christmas Carol. The 1843 Dickens tale of the Christmas Eve haunting of bitter, miserly old Londoner Ebenezer Scrooge has long since transcended the status of a mere beloved holiday classic and entered into the realm of myth and archetype, and at some level the story tends to work in retellings ranging from the Muppets to Married With Children to Beavis and Butt-Head.
It works again in Arizona Theatre Company’s Scrooge! directed by Matt August and playing at Tempe Center for the Arts. The songs, by Leslie Bricusse, are largely from the like-titled 1970 film, with Albert Finney. For the second year, the title role at ATC is played by Broadway veteran Shuler Hensley. Between his fine baritone, his crusty delivery and his impressive high forehead (he’s played the Frankenstein Monster twice, in the Broadway Young Frankenstein and in the movie Van Helsing), he strikes a spot-on note.
Aside from Hensley, Scrooge! runs primarily on theatrical spectacle of a rather glitzy but effective sort. A small puppet theater sits on the stage, mirroring the handsome and flexible set by Jason Ardizzone-West behind it. As the show starts, several kids in contemporary clothes, absorbed in their cell phones, get swept up into the action and thus introduced to the joys of live performance.
This Scrooge! is anything but low-tech, however. All manner of projections and lighting effects are deployed to help depict the ghostly presences and the shifting time frames. And Elizabeth Caitlin Ward’s costumes are colorful if not very rigorously Victorian; at times they have an almost Dr. Suess vibe.
Some of the Bricusse tunes are rousing, like Scrooge’s lustily misanthropic “I Hate People” or “I Like Life” by the Ghost of Christmas Present (Geoffrey F. Belliston). Probably the best is “Thank You Very Much,” led by the spirited Aaron Cammack as Tom Jenkins, dancing on poor Scrooge’s coffin. You may feel a twinge of sympathy for Scrooge’s side of the case in this scene; after all, if Jenkins can afford those stylish leather pants, shouldn’t he be able to keep up his payments to Scrooge?
Other numbers are less memorable, and the dialogue often simplifies, and blunts, some of the novel’s idiosyncratic language. But this show is less about Dickensian authenticity and more about genial, audience-pleasing festivity. At that, it heartily succeeds. One suspects Dickens would approve.
Scrooge! continues through December 28 at Tempe Center for the Arts; go to atc.org for details and tickets.
