‘Scrooge and Marley’ is a theatrical lump of coal

To paraphrase the opening lines of Charles Dickens’ great “ghost story of Christmas,” Israel Horovitz’s A Christmas Carol: Scrooge and Marley is dead as a doornail. That is mostly the fault of this mystifying 1978 adaptation of the Dickens novella, but also Bill Sizemore’s production at Theatre Arlington. Both zap the thrills and the joy out of the classic story.

Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is to holiday theater what E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Nutcracker and the Mouse King is to holiday dance. Just like choreographers have their way with Tchaikovsky’s score for The Nutcracker, adapters have found even more ways to look at the Dickens story.

In Horovitz’s version, Jacob Marley — the doornail-dead former business partner of Ebenezer Scrooge — doesn’t just spook Scrooge (and the audience) and warn of the visiting spirits, he sticks around to narrate and comment on the whole thing.

That makes Marley (Travis Cook) decidedly not scary; he’s more akin to the Stage Manager of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, only with chains and a Beetlejuice hairdo. In other words, he’s likeable, as narrators tend to be.

That’s not the original intent of the writer who created one of literature’s great ghouls, one who initiates a journey of redemption for the miserly, crotchety Scrooge (Robert Banks).

Horovitz also doesn’t leave much meat to pivotal scenes, especially the joyful party ones, where much humor can be mined. In the Ghost of Christmas Present (Judy Sizemore, in one of the better performances here) sequence, Fezziwig is barely a character, and we aren’t given the joy of his party so that Scrooge really understands what he’s missing. Likewise, the party games at the home of Scrooge’s nephew Fred (Reed Lewis) are axed — that’s one of Dickens’ best moments of defining what others think of Scrooge.

The threads with the family of Bob Cratchit (Michael Craig Rains) seem shortchanged, too. It becomes hard to feel for them or Tiny Tim, especially after Christmas Present’s speech that “they are not highly special,” but are happy because they have each other and make do with what they have.

It doesn’t help that the cast, except for Judy Sizemore, doesn’t have much life either. As Scrooge, Banks is barely unpleasant and gruff, but he never comes across as miserly nor mean-spirited or nasty, which would go a long way to making his final redemption more touching.

There are a few other odd choices here, such as having the scythe-carrying Ghost of Christmas Future (Reed Lewis) in a black cloak on in-line skates. It might work if fog covered the floor so he’d appear to be floating. Here it looks more like Death on Ice!

It’s an odd adaptation of the story that has earned its place in literary and theater history, and Theatre Arlington doesn’t figure out how to compensate for its flaws.

This story was originally published December 6, 2016 at 8:24 AM with the headline "‘Scrooge and Marley’ is a theatrical lump of coal."