Press Release: A Christmas Carol

Great Lakes Theater Festival Presents Cleveland’s Annual Holiday Classic A Christmas Carol

November 11, 2009

CLEVELAND, OH - The stage of the Ohio Theatre, PlayhouseSquare will glow with good spirits and time-honored tradition when Great Lakes Theater Festival (GLTF) presents its twenty-first annual production of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, running December 4 - 23, 2009. The production has delighted more than 525,000 people in its history, making it one of Northeast Ohio’s most-loved and best-attended holiday events.

Great Lakes Theater Festival’s forty-eighth season is presented with generous support from The Cleveland Foundation and the Ohio Arts Council. In addition, the Festival is generously funded by the citizens of Cuyahoga County through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture. A Christmas Carol’s media sponsor is Soft Rock 102.1 F.M. WDOK. GLTF’s Season Media Sponsors are Cleveland Scene, The Plain Dealer, WCLV 104.9 FM, WCPN 90.3 FM ideastream and WKSU 89.7 FM.

Director Andrew May, will stage former GLTF Artistic Director Gerald Freedman’s heartwarming adaptation of A Christmas Carol. The production features a multi-generational cast of actors, singers and dancers led by longtime Festival company member Aled Davies, returning for his second season in the role of miserly Ebenezer Scrooge.

“It’s exciting for us as a company of artists to revisit this great classic holiday story,” said Andrew May, who will stage this season’s production. “We are blessed with an immensely talented cast and a wonderful adaptation that we can’t wait to share. I am overjoyed to return to direct a piece of theater again this season that has meant as much to this company and to this community as has A Christmas Carol for over two decades.”

GLTF Producing Artistic Director Charles Fee remarked, “The combination of Gerald Freedman’s inspired and moving adaptation, Andrew May’s dynamic gifts as a director, our remarkable design team and our talented company are sure to delight audiences, whether they’re attending for the first time or returning to experience this holiday tradition again with friends and family.”

Freedman's adaptation of A Christmas Carol is presented as a story within a story. The fictitious Cleaveland family gathers in its Victorian-era parlor on Christmas Eve to read Mr. Dickens‘ book. As Mrs. Cleaveland reads the story to her family, her youngest child, Master William, re-imagines familiar faces as characters in the story: the Cleaveland’s crotchety manservant becomes Scrooge; Father becomes Bob Cratchit; Mother becomes Belle, and the Cleaveland children become the Cratchits, with Master William becoming the beloved Tiny Tim. In all, more than 60 Dickens characters are brought to life on stage.

The Festival’s production incorporates theatrical special effects to retain a strong sense of the supernatural, emphasizing the novel’s origins in folk tales and myth. Designers for the GLTF production blend exceptional stagecraft with dramatic effects that evoke the magical and mysterious aspects of a classic ghost story.

Great Lakes Theater Festival’s twenty-first annual production of A Christmas Carol commences on Friday, December 4th at 7:30 p.m. at the Ohio Theatre, PlayhouseSquare. Curtain times for all evening performances will remain at 7:30 p.m., with a 1:30 p.m. curtain time for Saturday, Tuesday and Wednesday matinees and a 3:00 p.m. curtain time for Sunday matinees. An audio-described performance is scheduled for Sunday, December 6th at 3:00 p.m. A sign-interpreted performance is scheduled for Sunday, December 13th at 3:00 p.m.

Single tickets for Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of A Christmas Carol range in price from $28-$59 (student tickets $26 – any performance / any seat) and are available by calling (216) 241-6000, by ordering online or by visiting the PlayhouseSquare Ticket Office. Groups of ten or more receive discounts and should call (216) 241-5490 x302 to make reservations.

Since 1962, Great Lakes Theater Festival has brought the pleasure, power and relevance of classic theater to the widest possible audience in Northern Ohio. The first resident company of PlayhouseSquare, Great Lakes Theater Festival has called the Theatre District home since 1982.

At a Glance: A Christmas Carol

* Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

Reviews: A Christmas Carol

Cleveland Scene
December 16, 2009
Ghosts of Christmas
GLTF and CPH offer divergent gifts
Keith A. Joseph

There are many ways for Northeastern Ohioans to actualize their holiday season. First and foremost, there’s the prophet Bing, tapping his pipe and bestowing his magical baritone rendition of Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” to win World War II and forever defining our Yuletide yearnings.

Then there are all those churches, malls, the Internet and, for those with cultural aspirations, live theater. Our two behemoth emporiums of the dramatic arts, Cleveland Play House and Great Lakes Theater Festival, span the continents and a century in their search for lucrative wintertime celebration.

For 21 years, Great Lakes has depended on Charles Dickens for their realization of Christmas ghosts and foggy redemption. The Play House turned to the 1983 movie A Christmas Story to give us an Americana holiday as if drawn by Norman Rockwell and broadcast on old Philco radios.

At the center of both shows is the idealization of the perfect mom and pop. In Great Lakes’ A Christmas Carol, the parents are the personification of Victorian upper class, Royal Doulton figurines given flesh and blood. In the Play House’s A Christmas Story, the parents are the lovable 1930s know-it-all bumblers found in yellowing Blondie cartoon strips.

Experiencing A Christmas Carol with a junior-high-school audience makes us aware how affecting its giant, ominous Ghost of Christmas Future puppet and other gothic trimmings remain after two decades. One could almost sense hundreds of youthful jaws drop as the walls broke apart to reveal the mammoth, jolly Ghost of Christmas Present. Even the most rock-laden sensibility must yield to the irresistible tug of the show’s brilliant music-box deployment of Victorian Christmas tunes.

For the adults in the house, the most plangent aspect is what could be the last onstage mating of two of our town’s lustrous co-stars. In her striped hooped skirt and cavalcade of curls, Laura Perrotta seems ready to lead her tykes in “Getting to Know You.” Andrew May, wearing a velvet maroon robe, has the dash and mellifluous charm of long-dead matinee idols. When May departs for California, our city will lose more than a little of its artistic panache.

If A Christmas Carol is our evergreen, A Christmas Story is more akin to an aluminum tree that has corroded in its five-year existence at the Play House. The elements that remain fresh are the daffy, father-knows-best charisma of Charles Kartali’s Old Man paired with the warmth of Elizabeth Ann Townsend”s perpetually meatloaf-making mother. Their Christmas-morning snuggle on the sofa seems the only genuine moment of holiday reverie. The fantasy sequences dealing with childhood terrors, Little Orphan Annie decoder rings and little boys who constantly want go “wee-wee” have been left under the tree too long, like stale cookies left for Santa.

Read the article here.

News Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times, Geauga Times Courier
December 10, 2009
Great Lakes Theater Festival Comes a’Carolling
Bob Abelman

Charles Dickens’ work was so popular in London in the 1840s that there were twelve different stage productions of his Christmas story “The Cricket on the Hearth.” The very first theatrical adaptation of his “A Christmas Carol” occurred before the novel was even completed.

The Great Lakes Theater Festival’s 21st annual adaptation of “A Christmas Carol” is evidence that his work is popular still. This old roasted chestnut of a holiday ghost story is once again performed by a stellar cast and crew at PlayhouseSquare’s Ohio Theatre through December 23.

Set in 1860s London, “A Christmas Carol” is an uplifting morality play about Ebenezer Scrooge’s one-night transformation from malevolent miser to charitable cherub. After revisiting the lost opportunities of Christmas past, witnessing the wasted potential of Christmas present, and foreseeing the horrors of Christmas future, Scrooge’s spirit is rejuvenated and his soul is salvaged.

Our own rejuvenation and salvation, and the show’s ability to instill a sense of holiday cheer, is the acid test for any performance of “A Christmas Carol.” This GLTF production passes with flying colors. For an hour and a half, the audience is transported to Victorian London and enveloped in Charles Dickens’ vivid imagination and poignant storytelling.

This marvelous production comes complete with the awe-inspiring scenic design one expects from a professionally staged holiday show, courtesy of John Ezell and Gene Emerson Friedman. Each scene seamless transitions from one to the next thanks to Andrew May’s restaging of Gerald Freedman’s direction. Wonderfully theatrical special effects, and phenomenal period costumes by James Scott, complete the picture. After 21 years running, this continues to be a gorgeous, sensory saturating presentation.

Laura Perrotta is the narrator of this tale—a fictitious Mrs. Cleaveland who reads “A Christmas Carol” to her family, which is then played out before the audience. She is charming and her lilting voice facilitates the fluidity of the Dickens-inspired dialogue. Also outstanding are Kevin Crouch as Young Scrooge/Nephew Fred, Dougfred Miller as the earthbound Marley’s spirit and Darryl Lewis as the effervescent Mr. Fezziwig.

Of course, “A Christmas Carol” is only as good as its Scrooge. He must convincingly transform from “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping” miser who believes that “every idiot who goes around with a Merry Christmas on his lips ought to be boiled in his own pudding,” to a man who “knew how to keep Christmas well.” Aled Davies, returning for his second stint in the lead role, is a full-throttled Scrooge whose metamorphosis is methodical, genuine and absolutely endearing.

Eight-year-old Cameron Nelson is a precious and marvelously minuscule Tiny Tim. Other featured child actors include Chagrin Falls’ own Natalie Welch, Sarah DiFiore and Jackson Daugherty, who are wonderful.

Unfortunately, too many kids in the cast suffer from a slight bout of pathological stage-sweetness. They bare broadly animated-but-automated smiles and glistening-yet-vacant eyes, much like the painted features on the robotic boys and girls in Disney’s “It’s a Small World After All” ride.

The play ends with Scrooge avowing to “honour Christmas in my heart and try to keep it… in the Past, the Present, and the Future.” So, too, does the GLTF through its perennial performances of “A Christmas Carol.” Theater-goers are fortunate to have the opportunity to see this production or to see it once again.

Talkin’ Broadway
December 8, 2009
A Christmas Carol
David Ritchey

The Great Lakes Theatre Festival again delivers a striking, emotional production of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (1812-1870). This is the twenty-first year the company has offered A Christmas Carol to the Cleveland area. Gerald Freedman originally adapted and directed this version of the Dickens classic. Andrew May has staged the 2009 production.

I’ve been fortunate to see the Festival production of this show each year for the past ten years. The production has varied, depending on who stages the production and who is playing Scrooge. Yet, always, the performance has always been moving.

Andrew May has brought nuanced changes into the production. These changes reflect the time in which we’re living. When the Ghost of Christmas Present brings forward the two children, Ignorance and Want, May slows the pace of the production so that the importance of Ignorance and Want cannot be lost on the audience. Also, the production is darker on two levels. First, the lighting is dimmer. According to Dickens this is a ghost story. Of course, this is a memory play. As Scrooge remembers events in his life, those scenes move out of the darkness and into the light of half-remembrance. This is effective dramatically. However, a bit more light would make the scenes more accessible. Next, this Scrooge (Aled Davies) seems genuinely moved by his conversion. In earlier productions, when Scrooge realized the errors of his life, he cavorted, danced, jumped and made a silly clown of himself. Davies leaves no room for an audience member to suspect he has not changed. Scrooge is an old man. His exuberance over learning how to share Christmas is reserved and contained. This is a more satisfying interpretation.

Andrew May continues to be one of the most gifted actors on a Cleveland stage. In addition to staging this production, he plays Bob Cratchit. He makes Cratchit bright and energetic until the end of the Cratchit scenes, when Tiny Tim dies. Then he moves the audience to feel his profound grief at the death of his child. Unfortunately, an actor cannot be on the stage and supervise a production. The person staging or directing a production needs to see the show from the back row to make sure the lighting and the movement are appropriate.

Once again, Great Lakes Theatre Festival has staged a moving production of A Christmas Carol; it is one of Cleveland's not-to-be-missed landmarks. As we face a 2010 with Want and Ignorance biting at our heels, I am reminded of Tiny Tim and his most famous line, “God Bless us every one.”

A Christmas Carol at the Ohio Theatre in the Playhouse Square, Cleveland, Ohio, through December 23. Ticket information: 216-241-6000 or online. The Spring Repertory 2010 opens on April 8 with Bat Boy and continues with the opening of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on April 22.

Read the article here.

The Plain Dealer
December 9, 2009
Great Lakes Theater Festival’s ‘A Christmas Carol’ makes a powerful statement
Tony Brown

In case there were lingering doubts, we now have incontrovertible proof, with the corporately rebranded “Disney’s A Christmas Carol,” that the charms, lessons and joys of Charles Dickens’ tale can endure just about any “improvements.”

And with Great Lakes Theater Festival's 21st annual rendition of Cleveland's reigning theatrical version, we know that this is a story that keeps adding charms, lessons and joys, even after repeated viewings, year in and year out.

The new film version subjects Dickens to Disneyfication, computer-geek director Robert Zemeckis and rubber-faced Jim Carrey.

The trick, the movie demonstrates, is sticking as much as possible to Dickens and his morals.

Doing so, to varying degrees, has seen a humbug named Scrooge safely through screen interpretations ranging from Alastair Sim and George C. Scott to Bill Murray and Mr. Magoo.

The Great Lakes version, written and originally staged by former artistic director Gerald Freedman, remains a sturdy vehicle, enclosed in a framing device involving a “Cleaveland” family reading the story aloud but otherwise remarkably true to Dickens, down to the lighthouse scene and the characters of Want and Ignorance.

But it is also flexible enough to allow minor revisions, in casting and interpretation -- and this season’s go-round, directed by Andrew May, has several noteworthy wrinkles.

Aled Davies returns for his second year as a thoughtfully evolving Ebenezer S., while the eclectic Dougfred Miller takes a first crack at the “dead as a doornail” Jacob Marley.

Most inventively, May has the three laconic onlookers at Scrooge’s future funeral laugh in staccato bursts, which grows increasingly funny the more they do it, the sign of a good gag.

And May takes a nicely nuanced turn as Bob Cratchit, Scrooge’s long-suffering but infinitely patient and virtuous clerk.

In this way, with much traditional and a wee bit new, Great Lakes' “A Christmas Carol” coalesces into a powerful statement about caring and being cared for.

Read the article here.