Frederick Stuart’s reinventive star turn as Ebenezer Scrooge tops the reasons why my third time seeing A Noise Within’s A Christmas Carol felt like experiencing this holiday spectacular for the very first time.

Adeptly adapted by Geoff Elliott (who alternates with Stuart in the role), and directed with equal parts imagination, flair, and humor by Elliott and Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, this is precisely the Christmas Carol you grew up with. (Indeed, not a word has been altered from Dickens’ original text.)

With Jeanine A. Ringer’s marvelously fluid “scenic concept” taking us from stunning tableau to stunning tableau, aided and abetted by composer-sound designer Robert Oriol’s mood-setting music, Ken Booth’s exquisite lighting design, Kristin Campbell’s gorgeous projections, and original costume designer Angela Balogh Calin’s supremely imaginative period and ghostly garb, it becomes as easy as Christmas pie to abandon adult skepticism and allow oneself to be transported into the world of theatrical magic the directors Elliott and team have once again confectioned.

Not only that, but with Oriole serving up a bunch of tunefully festive songs to the mix, Version 2024 could easily be retitled A Christmas Carol: The Musical.

Early scenes introduce us to Scrooge’s cheery nephew Fred (Mitch Connelly) and a couple of charity workers whom Scrooge quickly sends away empty-handed, though it doesn’t take long for things to take a decidedly otherworldly turn.

Audiences in search of thrills and chills will get more than a few of them when the towering specter of Scrooge’s onetime partner Jacob Marley (Riley Shanahan in Beetlejuice makeup and wig) arrives trailing a myriad of chains that extend way over the audience’s heads and up into the rafters as spookily garbed ensemble members add their scarifying cries to the live-and-prerecorded sound design mix.

And just wait until understudy Alison Rodriguez’s Ghost Of Christmas Past appears as if out of nowhere on a garden swing in a ruffled white fairy-princess gown and black bowler hat ready to take Scrooge on a magical trip down memory lane, including joyful Christmas celebrations at the home of Old Fezziwig and Young Scrooge’s (Mitch Connelly) promising but ultimately ill-fated romance with the lovely Belle (Roshni Shukla).

Next up is the twelve-foot tall Ghost of Christmas Present (Anthony Adu), adorned in more fresh fruit than Carmen Miranda wore in her entire life, who introduces Ebenezer to the family of his severely overworked-and-underpaid clerk Bob Cratchit (Kasey Mahaffy), his wife Martha (Emily Kosloski), and their half-dozen-or-so children (Brooklyn Bao, Stella Bullock, Brendan Burgos, John Preston, Estella Stuart, and Aria Zhang as the seemingly doomed Tiny Tim), all of whom manage to make merry despite their many misfortunes.

Last to appear as if risen from the dead is David A. Rangel’s eerie, black rags-sporting Ghost Of Christmas Future in the production’s eeriest sequence, one that introduces us to a Fagin-like Old Joe (Shanahan) and his band of thieves who’ve stripped Scrooge’s home bare of his earthly possessions.

Still, anyone who expects this last ghost’s vision of doom and gloom to become reality has somehow never read or seen A Christmas Carol before, and much of the joy in seeing yet another version of this classic tale is in witnessing Ebenezer Scrooge’s transformation from grinch to mensch.

It’s a joy that’s doubled this year for audiences fortunate enough to catch A Noise Within treasure Stuart giving Scrooge subtle new shadings, cranky charm, and despite his surly exterior, suggesting from the get-go that there just might be an old softy hidden beneath the surliness.

Featured performances are uniformly terrific, with pretty much everyone in the cast playing multiple roles in costume after costume and wig after wig.

Indeed the only directorial misstep this year is in reassigning narrator duties, not to Charles Dickens himself as in productions past, but to what appears to be a London street urchin, and though Mildred Marie Langford is charming in the role, the character’s thick Cockney accent means at least half of Dickens’ classic words get lost in an abundance of East London vowels and dropped H’s.

Ella Blain (Fred’s wife) and Madison Keffer complete the multi-talented, multi-tasking cast.

Music director Rod Bagheri elicits top-notch harmonies from the ensemble cast, with additional kudos shared by wig and make-up designer Tony Valdez and properties designer Stephen Taylor.

Sami Hanson is stage manager and Irene DH Lee is assistant stage manager. Andrea Odinov is dialect coach. Miranda Johnson Haddad is dramaturg. Lucy Pollak is publicist.

It wouldn’t be December without at least several A Christmas Carols playing around town, and in case you’re wondering which one to choose, no Los Angeles theater does Charles Dickens prouder season after season than A Noise Within. Adding Frederick Stuart’s Scrooge to the mix at certain performances makes this year’s production extra special indeed.

A Noise Within, 3352 East Foothill Blvd, Pasadena.
www.ANoiseWithin.org

–Steven Stanley
December 21, 2024
Photos 5, 6, 7: Craig Schwartz

Tags: A Noise Within, Charles Dickens, Los Angeles Theater Review