What the Dickens! After 18 years of banishing the bah-humbugs, ACT’s current incarnation of “A Christmas Carol” is taking its final bow.
To be sure the classics always get reinvented for a new generation but I’ll admit that the news made this theater critic quite wistful. Not to carbon date myself too much but I actually remember when this iteration was brand new, having grown up on the shadowy magic of the previous version, which was unabashedly bleak and political, a product of its age. Long ago, I even played one of the plucky little Cratchit children under the tutelage of Dakin Matthew’s marvelously mischievous Scrooge.
Truth be told, I loved the intricate narration that framed that deep and dark production, which was adapted by Dennis Powers and Laird Williamson.
The sparklier current version, written by Carey Perloff and Paul Walsh, by contrast, has far more music and more colorful set pieces, a nod to its more ebullient era.
Two venerable Bay Area actors, James Carpenter and Anthony Fusco, have held court as Old Ebenezer in recent years. The late great Ken Ruta famously played the ghost of Jacob Marley, before passing the torch to Dan Hiatt.
Of course all of this rich Bay Area theater lore is lost on my daughter and her generation, sometimes described as Gen. Z, the target audience for the show.
Daphne, now 13, started going to this “Carol” when she was so tiny that she wept and trembled at the very sight of the ghost of Christmas Future, a colossal wraith-like black puppet. I remember holding her on my lap and wondering if she’d be traumatized by the theater forever.
Instead, she adored “Carol” from start to finish and it’s been a cherished part of our family’s holiday tradition, along with the San Francisco Ballet’s magnificent “Nutcracker” (so many snow flurries this year!), the immersive Dickens Fair at the Cow Palace and the Union Square ice rink, ever since.
We even attended the virtual versions of these Yuletide chestnuts during the pandemic, although it was far from the real deal. But some traditions glow more brightly when it takes some effort to preserve them, like a recipe that gets passed down through the decades.
To be honest, I’m not sure exactly where the time has gone since Daphne’s first “Carol.” She no longer fits on my lap, certainly, although she still wishes they had brownies at the intermission.
Her childhood, this “Carol” and the holidays feel intimately entwined for us, as for so many Bay Area families. That’s how I explain the tears I often shed in the play’s final moments.
The passage of time feels marked by each year’s visit to “Carol,” a joyous event despite its ever-more relevant call for charity in the face of unchecked greed.
The play’s socially relevant themes may hit every family differently to be sure but our personal histories with the production, the memories that come alive when the curtain rises, make this swan song all the more poignant. Theater, like life, is ephemeral, a fleeting moment of time that can never be recaptured.
That sense of legacy also raises expectations for the next version. Artistic direction Pam MacKinnon is collaborating on a new incarnation with playwright Craig Lucas, famed for “The Light in the Piazza” and “Prelude to a Kiss,” for next year.
While we will surely miss Sharon Lockwood’s tart turn as the long-suffering Mrs. Dilber and Catherine Castellanos as the formidable ghost of Christmas present, we can’t wait to see the old miser slouch toward his redemption anew.
Contact Karen D’Souza at [email protected].
‘A CHRISTMAS CAROL’
By Charles Dickens, adapted by Carey Perloff and Paul Walsh, presented by American Conservatory Theater
Through: Dec. 24
Where: Toni Rembe Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco
Details: $25-$130; www.act-sf.org
