It’s a clever, promising premise, and were it given less over-the-top treatment, Arthur M. Jolly’s Mrs. Dilber’s Christmas Carol just might be a winner, but excessively broad performances squander much of the good cheer Jolly’s script might otherwise inspire. (It would help too if you could understand more than half of what the actors are saying.)

Charles Dickens fans will recognize the titular Mrs. Dilber (Bree Pavey) as skinflint Ebenezer Scrooge’s beleaguered housekeeper, whose sole wish this and every Christmas is a new set of thick, heavy, velvet bed-curtains to keep warm in the winter. (as if that’s going to happen.)

she’s certainly not expecting the ghost of Jacob Marley (Thomas Ashworth) to inform her that the ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and Future are about to visit her five minutes before their on-the-hour, on-the-dot appointments with the penny-pincher himself.

What they haven’t counted on is Mrs. Dilber’s gift for thickly Cockney-accented gab, so whether they actually make to Ebenezer’s sleeping quarters on time is open to question.

As we head towards the inevitable “God bless us everyone,” Jolly introduces us to pretty much the entire cast of Dickens favorites, though this time round from the housekeeper’s point of view.

It’s to Mrs. Dilber that charity workers Benny (Christopher Leo Simms) and Flan (director Michael Houston subbing in on opening night) bemoan Scrooge’s refusal to donate to the poor, though playwright Jolly does stick closer to the Dickens original when introducing us to Scrooge’s nephew Fred (Carlos Gomez, Jr.), the miser’s overworked-and-underpaid clerk Bob Cratchit (Kyle Vonn Elzey), Bob’s wife Emily (Breiyonna Monet), and the not so tiny Tiny Tim (Robert Jolly), cursed with a worrisome propensity to hide animal bones, some of them gnawed, under his bed.

It’s Mrs. Dilber, not Scrooge, who time-travels back to witness young Ebenezer (Simms) wooing the beauteous Belle (Sarah Nilsen) and overhear Belle’s sister Abigail (Cassandra Carmona) cautioning her not to marry a man whose name screamed out in passion would break any romantic or sexual spell.

Indeed, Mrs. Dilber spends so much time with a flamboyant Latino Ghost Of Christmas Past (Gomez) that he’ll have to reschedule his visit with Scrooge for the following Christmas Eve, and the same is true for the Ghosts of both Christmas Present (a blonde-bobbed Matthew Scheel) and Future (Barbera Ann Howard in skeleton mode), who spend the next two hours with Mrs. Dilber and not with the master of the house.

Joining Dickens’ cast of characters midway through are Hans Christian Andersen’s tragic Little Match Girl (Julieta Gerlein) and Robert Lewis Stevenson’s murderous Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde (Houston), and by the time we reach Christmas yet to come, you can expect all hell to break loose, quite literally.

If it’s not already clear, Mrs. Dilber’s Christmas Carol is about as unique a take on an old classic as you’ve likely seen, and had director Houston not given his entire cast (completed by Lara Blanco and Jennifer DeRosa as the unfortunately named Clarabelicious and Roseola Two-Poots, and swing Rosie Ryden as Martha Cratchit) free rein to ham it up as much as humanly possible, Mrs. Dilber’s Christmas Carol might actually work.

It doesn’t help matters that the cast’s high-decibel delivery of an assortment of heavy London accents renders much of what they’re saying unintelligible, this being one case where comprehensibility ought to have taken precedence over accuracy.

With all these nits to pick, it may come as somewhat of a surprise that I actually quite enjoyed the first third of the show, and found myself laughing pretty consistently at the onstage shenanigans early on.

That enjoyment faded as the mood darkened and the laughs had become fewer and farther in-between though not the over-the-topness of the actors’ delivery.

At the very least Mrs. Dilber’s Christmas Carol scores points for its production design, in particular Danielle Ozymandias’s array of Victorian-era costumes for the filthy rich (and the filthy poor) and Natasha Renee Potts’ and Houston’s assortment of period props, Lemon Baardsen’s dramatic lighting, and Houston and Scheel’s spooky sound design on Jen DeRosa, Ashworth, and Olivia Rodriguez’s multitasking set.

Alicia Herder is assistant director. Macedonia Bullington is production stage manager. Isaac Deakyne was rehearsal stage manager. Marc Leclerc is fight choreographer and Nilsen is fight captain. Ken Werther is publicist.

January’s La Cocina proved what Loft Ensemble is capable of with a terrific script, savvy direction, and topnotch performances. I wish I could say the same about Mrs. Dilber’s Christmas Carol.

Loft Ensemble, 11031 Camarillo St., North Hollywood. Through December 22. Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8:00. Sundays at 7:00.
www.loftensemble.org

–Steven Stanley
December 5, 2024
Photos: Paul Davis

Tags: Arthur M. Jolly, Charles Dickens, Loft Ensemble, Los Angeles Theater Review