THEATER REVIEW : An Up-to-Date ‘Christmas Carol’ at the Rep

Cheers to the San Diego Repertory Theatre for putting the true Christmas spirit into its 14th edition of “A Christmas Carol” on the Lyceum Stage.

The theater could have trotted out the same wonderful, heartwarming sure-fire success that “A Christmas Carol” has always been for them--and goodness knows, at the end of a tough, controversial season like this past one, they could have used something safe.

They could have cut costs by dusting off old sets, freshening up old costumes and pulling out old props. Instead, director Walter Schoen looked at an oft-overlooked side of Charles Dickens--his role as a crusader against the social injustices of his time--and decided to address the sadnesses of our own.

Instead of focusing on the poor of Victorian England, Schoen set this year’s “Carol” on a San Diego street where the homeless congregate. The prologue is simple and brief: Some of the homeless, to keep warm, are burning books. One of the books, pulled from the fire by a little boy who wants to hear a story, is “A Christmas Carol.” As the boy’s mother reads the story, the homeless community acts it out, using props from the street: a wastebasket with planks of wood for Bob Cratchit’s desk, a shopping cart with a coin changer for a store.

Once the mother, played with rousing spirit by Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson, begins reading the story, the script is the same sturdy, satisfying adaptation by Douglas Jacobs that the Rep has always used.

One of the pluses of the contemporary opening is that it gives the show welcome room to play with a range of retrospective styles. The dances, smartly choreographed by Bruce Nelson, range from old English steps to break dancing by the agile Nelson as Mr. Fezziwig. And the music--beautifully orchestrated by Linda Vickerman for one of the Rep’s most able singing casts--moves effortlessly from gospel singing to old carols to modern pop.

Still, while the Rep’s daring deserves praise, Schoen would have been more successful if he had pushed his concept further.

The director seems to be after a “Man of La Mancha” effect, in which Dickens’ book, like Cervantes’ manuscript in “Man of La Mancha,” needs to justify its existence if it is to survive. But he doesn’t put enough force behind the idea.

When the boy saves the book from the fire, the man tending the fire just shrugs instead of scolding him. There is an issue here for the man to raise; when people are cold, isn’t concrete warmth more important than storytelling ?

What needs to be pointed out more forcefully--obvious as it may be to some--is that this book is needed to warm these people’s hearts even more than it is needed to warm their hands.

Also, to elicit more sympathy for the homeless who act out the play, one needs to establish characters--even briefly--who can show themselves to be personally affected by the story in the end.

Why not have someone--perhaps the small boy’s mother--beseech the vagrant who is to play Scrooge for an extra piece of bread for her boy who is ailing? Why not have her plead for the sake of the Christmas spirit, only to be turned down by the fellow who--in the true spirit of Scrooge--doesn’t see why Christmas should be used as an excuse to take away a starving man’s last crust?

Why not show the small boy, who does in fact play Tiny Tim, as being sick or handicapped in some way? And when the story is over, might the man not help him by offering him something to eat and an arm to help him walk?

Still, what does come through overwhelmingly is that this is a story with its heart in the right place. The talented cast is a joy, from W. Francis Walters as a crusty bourgeois Scrooge to Kory Abosada as both Tiny Tim and the youngest Ebeneezer (a clever touch to help Scrooge identify with Tiny Tim), to Richard Soto as Scrooge’s ebullient nephew, Fred.

Thompson injects a welcome toughness to Mrs. Cratchit as well as to the part of first narrator (several people narrate as the book is passed from hand to hand), Damon Bryant lends weighty pain to Scrooge’s dead partner, Jacob Marley, and Maggie Stewart suggests an ethereal, musty air as the gentle Ghost of Christmas Past.

The contemporary squalor of the sets by Thomas Buderwitz are clever in a bittersweet way--the vagrants’ imagination of a feast is all wrapped up in buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Cheez-Its, with empty soda cans decorating the holiday wreaths. The costumes by Catherine Meachum find common threads, literally, between contemporary layering of faded cloth and Victorian layering of the same.

The lighting by John B. Forbes is excellent, and Schoen’s direction is inspired except for the curious beginning in which it is not clear when the play actually starts.

The play’s awkward opening is redeemed by an effective ending in which it becomes clear that this story about Christmas does not end at the theater doors.

As the theater crowds exit through a glittering, bedecked Horton Plaza, with the homeless stretched out not far from the pretty and upscale stores, this “Christmas Carol” becomes a powerful reminder of how urgently the ordinary person, like Mr. Scrooge, needs to learn how to keep Christmas in his heart if anything is to change.

Dickens would have liked this show.

“A CHRISTMAS CAROL”

By Charles Dickens. Adapted by Douglas Jacobs. Director is Walter Schoen. Sets by Thomas Buderwitz. Lighting by John B. Forbes. Costumes by Catherine Meacham. Sound by Jeff Ladman. Music director, composer, arranger is Linda Vickerman. Choreography by Bruce Nelson. Stage manager is Lisa Ledwich. With Kory Abosada, Beth Bayless, Damon Bryant, Linda Castro, Tony De Bruno, Michael Grady, Antonio Johnson, Jason Kenny.