The spirits of the season are a challenged crowd in 'Wonders'
Having rung the changes on the time-honored seasonal bells of Charles Dickens' "Christmas Carol" two years ago, Ben Asaykwee returns to the District Theatre with loftier bells on, starring in a more ambitious original production called "Wonders." With songs and dialogue taking shape often in rhymed couplets, Asaykwee further exercises his creative chops in the allegorical mode. He leaves a parodistic approach to Dickens behind. I saw the show in a preview Thursday night, finding it full of signs not only wondrous but also grounded in the reality of needing more work. "A Christmas Carol" is brought in obliquely, shedding light on the underlying conflicts that make the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge so compelling and believable in Dickens' novella and the many stage shows and movies adapted from it. Hope (Sarah Zimmerman) is indomitable. In "Wonders," the emotional conflicts, entailing the moral conflicts to which our emotions con...