Theater Review : One Man Adds to Ring of Truth in Dickens’ ‘Chimes’

There is something seductive about the transformation of a nasty and rich old curmudgeon such as Ebenezer Scrooge.

Everybody knows an Ebenezer to whom they would love to send a trio of ghosts on Christmas Eve, though few probably recognize Scrooge-like traits.

How different is Charles Dickens’ other tale of metamorphosis, “The Chimes,” now in a mesmerizing one-man production at San Diego’s Sledgehammer Theatre.

Here, Toby Veck, a 68-year-old Everyman, undergoes a change of heart thanks to a Twilight Zone-like journey--first nine, and then 18 years into the future on New Year’s Eve. Toby is a working stiff whose crime is that he has lost faith in his fellow man. He reads headlines that, though verbatim Dickens, suggest the sad tales of today. One about a woman who kills herchild brings the case of Susan Smith sadly to mind.

“It frightens me,” Toby says, putting down his newspaper. “It seems as if we can’t go right, or do right or be righted. . . . I can’t make out whether we have any business on the face of the Earth or not. . . . I am not able to make up my mind whether there is any good at all in us, or whether we are born bad.”

*

Brian Salmon shows remarkable depth and comic breadth as the storyteller who plays all the dozens of parts, including Toby, his sweet daughter Meg, Meg’s suitor Richard, various upper-class types including an Alderman and a Member of Parliament, a young girl and a garrulous old woman.

Sledgehammer artistic director Scott Feldsher, whose reputation has been built on an avant-garde sensibility and technical wizardry on a small budget, departs from expectations by directing simply and eloquently.

As Salmon gives the prologue to the story, describing the wind curling round the church and the chimes, the actor moves all around the theater, at times in the dark, giving a ghostly feeling to a sometimes spooky tale.

Instead of special effects, Salmon uses a simple prop--a white handkerchief that becomes a cover for a basket of steaming tripe, a hat for a fine lady, a child being carried by a worried father, a monetary offering from a fallen woman and a handkerchief again to wipe a gentleman’s sweat away.

Wearing simple black trousers, black jacket and white shirt, Salmon narrates the story with compassion and an amusing variety of accents and mannerisms--one pointedly more reflective of (and poking fun at) a Southern senator than of any of the indigenous population in Dickensian England.

Salmon first makes us see anxious, stooped Toby, waiting as usual for work on the steps of a church. Then, suddenly, he is Toby’s gentle daughter Meg, telling Toby she is to be married to a young laborer named Richard. Some gentlemen appear, discouraging the match because they see little good coming from a poor girl marrying a poor man and having poor children running in the streets.

Later that night, when Toby has brooded on the hopelessness of the future, he falls asleep, and the spirit of the church chimes transports him nine years into the future. There, unseen, he finds a dissolute Richard and sees his daughter’s sadness.

Later, he goes nine more years in the future and discovers deeper tragedies--and how even a woman as sweet as his daughter can come close to committing a horrible crime when society has turned its back on her.

Toby, like Ebenezer, awakes a changed man, revitalized by his new understanding of how the bad are not simply “bad,” but that the best of us can go astray without love and support.

*

The Sledgehammer Theatre space, a stern-looking former church and funeral parlor painted black and with a beautiful stained-glass window in back, could not be more perfect for a story about a church’s chimes. It seems all the more effective with Ashley York Kennedy’s smoky lighting, so suggestive of London fog.

Coincidentally, Kennedy also designed the fine lighting for that other holiday Dickens’ piece, “A Christmas Carol,” a little farther downtown at the San Diego Repertory Theatre.

“The Chimes,” while it stands alone, works especially well as a companion piece for “A Christmas Carol”--it’s like “A Christmas Carol” through the eyes of a Bob Cratchit who has lost hope and must rediscover his determination to help others.

“The Chimes” also is darker. “A Christmas Carol” directs pity to the obvious physical ailments of Tiny Tim--a beautiful, innocent poster child--who may die without proper care. A subplot in “The Chimes” points to the subtler tragedy of an impoverished 9-year-old whose future holds a life and death in the streets if no one helps her. Just as the chimes revitalize Toby Veck’s heart, this show is a reminder of the importance of keeping faith in perilous times and of honoring the demands this season of light should make of the heart.

* “The Chimes,” Sledgehammer Theatre, 1620 6th Ave., San Diego. Tonight and Friday, 8, Saturday, 3 p.m. Ends Saturday. $8, general audiences; $5, students; 99 cents, ages 12 and under. (619) 544-1484. Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes. Brian Salmon Storyteller

A Sledgehammer Theatre adaptation of the Christmas book by Charles Dickens. Directed by Scott Feldsher. Lights: Ashley York Kennedy. Sound: Dan (Pea) Hicks. Stage manager: Andy Tighe.