A New York-based director, star, and production design team have joined forces to bring Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to spectacular solo-performance life at the Geffen Playhouse.

 More than any other A Christmas Carol I’ve seen (and I’ve seen a bunch of them), Jefferson Mays, Susan Lyons, and Michael Arden’s stage adaptation offers audiences the Dickens classic precisely as it was written back in 1843, albeit trimmed to about half its original length the better to come in at a brisk ninety-five minutes.

Indeed, until Marley’s Ghost shows up to announce the impending arrival of the three spirits who will alter Ebenezer Scrooge’s life for good, it would seem that director Arden and his star, Tony winner Mays, will be serving up a recorded-books-style word-for-word reading of the original Dickens text with slightly different voices for its all-seeing narrator, its miserly protagonist, and the characters introduced early on, most notably Scrooge’s nephew Fred, his clerk Bob Cratchit, and the charity workers Scrooge quickly rebuffs on this Christmas Eve.

 The contributions of scenic designer Dane Laffrey, lighting designer Ben Stanton, sound designer Joshua D. Reid, and projection designer Lucy Mackinnon would likewise seem at first to be relatively slight, a minimally designed office lit only by a few candles with an occasional sound effect here or there.

 Dead Jacob Marley’s arrival changes all that, allowing Laffrey’s revolving set to reveal surprise after surprise, taking us from Scrooge’s bedroom to an elegant holiday party at Mr. Fezziwig’s home (Mackinnon’s animated projections revealing its multitude of guests behind opaque windows) to Bob Cratchit’s humble abode to nephew Fred’s opulent dining room and ultimately back to Scrooge’s bedchambers revealed in all their light-of-day details.

Along the way, Stanton’s lighting and Reid’s sound design get more and more breathtaking.

Admittedly, this A Christmas Carol may be the darkest (or at least the most dimly lit) stage adaptation ever, but lighting designer Stanton works wonders within these parameters, and never more so than when the stage explodes with ghostly fireworks accompanied by Reid’s thriller-ready effects.

 In addition, Stanton and Reid join forces with star Mays to create one stunning two-character scene after another, beginning with Scrooge’s confrontation with his former business partner, the former lit with a warm candle glow, the latter with a ghastly pallor, his booming voice amped to many times its normal volume.

 As for the Ghost Of Christmas Past, Reid’s alteration of the spirit’s voice is precisely what a reader might imagine from Dickens’ description (“like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man”) with Stanton’s lighting completing the eerie transformation to chilling effect.

Mackinnon’s projections add atmosphere throughout, including some particularly creepy effects, as when Ignorance and Want (“No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.”) emerge from beneath Christmas Present’s coat.

 Having won his Best Actor Tony for playing more than thirty characters in I Am My Own Wife and a Tony nomination for playing another nine in A Gentleman’s Guide To Love And Murder, Mays proves the perfect choice to bring to life (and occasional death) another couple dozen in A Christmas Carol, decked out in a Charles Dickens wig and costume designer Laffrey’s single black early-Victorian outfit and doing tour-de-force work throughout.

(Arden and sound designer Reid do cheat a bit on the solo-performance conceit by having Mays converse with a prerecorded child’s voice on Christmas morning, but no biggie.)

 Production stage manager Ross Jackson and assistant stage manager Sue Karutz are the production’s sole L.A. representatives.

What starts out as a simple out-loud reading soon turns into one of the Christmas season’s most spectacular stage offerings. That it ends up quite possibly the most moving and inspiring A Christmas Carol I’ve seen is icing on the holiday cake.

Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood.
www.geffenplayhouse.com

–Steven Stanley
November 8, 2018
Photos: Chris Whitaker

Tags: Charles Dickins, Geffen Playhouse, Jefferson Mays, Los Angeles Theater Review, Michael Arden