A production design that just keeps getting more gorgeous, staging that gets more and more inventive year after year, new songs and harmonies to make it seem almost a musical, and cast additions that only add to the magic… For these reasons and more, there’s no A Christmas Carol in town that comes close to matching A Noise Within’s one-of-a-kind take on the Charles Dickens classic.

Adeptly adapted by Geoff Elliott and directed with equal parts imagination, flair, and humor by Elliott and Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, ANW’s A Christmas Carol captivates from the moment we enter the world of wonder created by Jeanine A. Ringer’s marvelously fluid “scenic concept,” composer-sound designer Robert Oriol’s mood-establishing original music and infectious original songs,

 Ken Booth’s exquisite lighting design, brand-new projections designed by Nick Santiago, original costume designer Angela Balogh Calin’s supremely imaginative period and ghostly garb, and Stephen Taylor’s equally period-perfect props, all of which transport audiences from modern-day Pasadena to 1840s London in the most wondrous of ways.

Early scenes introduce us to Scrooge’s cheery nephew Fred (Jack Zubieta) and a couple of charity workers whom Scrooge (Henri Lubati at the performance reviewed) 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 another half dozen or so spooky spirits add their scarifying cries to the live-and-prerecorded sound design mix.

And just wait until Trisha Miller’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 the most joyful of Christmas celebrations at the home of Old Fezziwig (and ooh what costumes Calin and wigs master Tony Valdes have designed for this holiday celebration), with only Young Scrooge’s (Zubieta) breakup with lost love-of-his life Belle (Cassandra Marie Murphy) putting a damper on whatever hope Scrooge had for a happily ever after.

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 (Amber Liekhus), and their half-dozen-or-so children (Brooklyn Bao, Stella Bullock, Brendan Burgos, Micah Lanfer, and Dorothy Smith alongside 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 the eerie, black rags-sporting Ghost Of Christmas Future (with Dan Lin hidden inside) 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.

Alternating with Elliott at selected performances, the absolutely marvelous Lubati makes the miser with a heart of stone so thoroughly human and three-dimensional, we totally buy into in his transformation from ogre to the jolliest and most generous man in town.

Miller’s luscious Ghost Of Christmas Past and Adu’s jovial Ghost Of Christmas Present are absolute delights, Shanahan is creepy perfection as Jacob Marley and a crafty hoot as Old Joe, and like fellow ghost Dan Lin, all three get to excel in multiple smaller roles throughout the show.

Mahaffy and Liekhus’s Bob and Mrs. Cratchit are the warmest and most wonderful of parents, Zubieta’s cheery Fred, Murphy’s lovely Belle, and Analisa Idalia’s charming Mrs. Fred are multitasking standouts, and the kids are pretty darned adorable each and every one.

Last but not least, Alison Rodriguez’s contemporary Londoner narrates the tale, reading aloud  from a paperback edition of the Dickens masterpiece with infectious relish.

Music director Rod Bagheri once again elicits top-notch harmonies from the ensemble cast as they dance along to Rodriguez-Elliott and Indira Tyler’s high-spirited choreography.

 Angela Sonner is stage manager and Hope Matthews is assistant stage manager. Andrea Odinov is dialect coach. Miranda Johnson-Haddad is dramaturg. Lucy Pollak is publicist. And it wouldn’t be an A Noise Within production without Front Of House Manager Melody Moore greeting audiences as they head to their seats.

 If last year’s A Christmas Carol already proved that a very good thing could be made even better, this year’s tops even 2024’s already extra special ACC from dramatic start to transformative finish. No wonder this Pasadena/L.A. tradition keeps audiences coming back year after year after year.

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

–Steven Stanley
December 20, 2025
Photos: Abe Portillo

Visit www.theatreinla.com/nowplayingrs.php for a review roundup of what’s now playing in theaters around Los Angeles.

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