Stageloft's 'Christmas Carol' brings new vigor to old favoriteBy Paul Kolas Telegram and Gazette Reviewer STURBRIDGE- Stageloft's evocative presentation of "A Christmas Carol" is more conventional this year than past offerings, which have used the specter of Jacob Marley as an omniscient narrator. Saturday night's technically imposing performance, replete with expert high profile lighting and foreboding sound effects, revealed a new wrinkle or two not seen before. Toward the end of the first act, there is a very effective montage of the events leading up to Ebenezer Scrooge's ascendancy in the business world, as he forsakes his love of Belle in the name of money. Todd Darling, playing Scrooge with vigorous disdain followed by fervent enlightenment, watches a younger version of himself, conjured by the Ghost of Christmas Past, sitting at his office desk counting his profits and threatening all those who pass by with debtor's prison if they can't pay their loans on time. Jacob Marley is still alive and cracking the whip of greed as his business partner. Suddenly, Darling is sitting at the desk, re-living his past for the moment, until he's jolted from his all-consuming avarice back to a spectator's alarmed perspective. And at the close of the play, the ghosts of Jacob Marley, Christmas Past and Christmas Present comment on the joyous spiritual conversion of Scrooge, as he stands off to the side, in smiling freeze-frame with Tiny Tim, the Cratchit family, and various townspeople. There is much to recommend in director Jeremy Woloski's convivial interpretation of this time-honored morality tale. He and Josh Minor deserve high praise for their set, lighting and reverberating sound design. The stage looks like a living Christmas card, decked in red and green and brown, while the lighting is portioned deftly to illuminate Scrooge's home, his office, and the Cratchit dining room. Besides Darling's spirited turn as Scrooge, there is John McGonigle's agonized and lacerating Ghost of Jacob Marley to savor. Robbin Joyce plays Mrs. Cratchit with an agreeable lack of expected bitterness. Erik Evan Johnsen nicely underplays Bob Cratchit rather than drowning us in bathos. The youthful Caitlyn Griffin displays surprising poise as the Ghost of Christmas Past. Mark Bourdeau invests the Ghost of Christmas Present with a shifting blend of jocularity and grave import. Robert C. Latino is a cackling delight as Old Joe. Jamie Cloutier is movingly elegiac as Scrooge's lost love Belle. Perhaps the most satisfying performance of all belongs to Peter Arsenault as both Scrooge's nephew Fred and the young adult Scrooge. His vocal inflections and facial expressions seem instinctual and yet entirely thought out at the same time, a rare combination in any actor, let alone one as relatively young as Arsenault. There is also competent support from much of the very large cast, including Zachary Darling's ineluctable presence as Tiny Tim, but the production is marred by those cast too young for their roles. Too, there are times when the pacing flags and the energy level wavers, but for the most part this is a worthy addition to the annual parade of "Christmas Carols" that invade our local theaters this time of year. |