When Charles Dickens’ novel “A Christmas Carol” was published during Christmas week in 1843, it sold out before Christmas Eve.
As a play, it is still a charmer, and Center Repertory Company’s show at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek, promoted as the longest running Bay Area “Christmas Carol,” is keeping up the tradition in high spirits.
There are thankfully few surprises in Cynthia Caywood and Richard L. James’ adaptation, a brightly lit, fast-moving production directed by Scott Denison: Michael Ray Wisely plays Scrooge, the wealthy miser, with just the right amount of bad temper in his musings on the benefits of capitalism; and visitations by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future serve to remind him powerfully of his lost childhood, his miserable present and a dark future to come. Also, the ghost of Scrooge’s business partner Marley terrifies.
My companions at the show, youngsters who have seen it in previous years, had definitive comments. Wes, 9, said his favorite moment was when Marley (K. Scott Coopwood) rises in chains from below the stage, a haunting figure bathed in transparent green light (also projected on the portraits in Scrooge’s lodging as well), adding more ghosts into the mix.
Wes also liked Scrooge, noting his “good personality, good acting, and just enough forceful “‘humbugs!’”
Elodie, a newly minted 13-year-old and scenic designer in the making, focused on Christmas Past, vibrantly acted by Kerri Shawn in a gown sparkling with numerous light globes and “silver confetti lights that travel to the audience like explosions.”
Both gave high marks to the Fezziwigs’ party, awarded “best in show” to Terrance Austin Smith’s vivid and capricious Christmas Present, and agreed that Anderson Moore was a fine Tiny Tim.
We all missed the attention usually given to the Cratchit family dinner, and where was the boy sent by the reformed Scrooge to purchase the Christmas goose? Blink and one might miss “And a merry Christmas to us all!”
Mark Twain called “A Christmas Carol” “nothing but glittering frostwork,” but audiences continue to go and enjoy it, and perhaps take its message about economic inequality and human kindness to heart.
Center Repertory Company’s “A Christmas Carol” continues through Dec. 22 at Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek. Tickets are $49-$79 at centerrep.org.
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