Scrooge reinvents himself once again, dashing through the snow at IRT

 

Scrooge upbraids his clerk, Bob Cratchit.

For the first time in four years I've seen Indiana Repertory Theatre's production of "A Christmas Carol," as adapted by Tom Haas from Charles Dickens' novella, I've sensed a show chastened by the pandemic.

I'm allowing for having projected personal feelings of having come through a trying historical episode onto the show. The robustness of the re-creation remains to a large degree, but the stage action feels starker this time around, and the cast is smaller. The bitter side of the fantasy leaves its imprint, despite the famous happy ending, in which the habitual skinflint and misanthrope becomes a one-man source of Christmas cheer in merry old, uncharacteristically snow-covered London.

Janet Allen directs the show in her last season as IRT's artistic director. And the company itself is observing another milestone, its golden anniversary, in 2022-23. For me, this version conveys the sense that the world has been through something that has dispelled all illusion. The action is more focused toward downstage, with lighting that aims to put the show's fantastic elements in their place as departures from the defining light of real life.

For the second time but a first for me, Rob Johansen is cast as Ebenezer Scrooge, bringing his gift for extravagant facial and physical acting to the role. This Scrooge presents us with a Victorian model of the Type A personality: He's not just mean, he's mean out of wound-up conviction and habit — a menace of executive control that Dickens would later maximize as Gradgrind in "Hard Times."

The Cratchit family unwittingly enlightens Scrooge.

Scrooge's definitive  "Bah, humbug!" takes its place along a spectrum of dismissiveness toward any appeals to his sense of charity or other seasonal uplift. What makes the characterization work so well, at least the way I saw it Friday night, is that his sudden buoyancy after three disturbing, time-traveling dreams has the same nervous energy as the aging crank he has left behind him. You can see the new Scrooge as the archetype of the Victorian reformer, an apostle of social progress.

Ryan Artzberger, a  Scrooge in many IRT productions dating back to 2010, is now the severely dominated clerk Bob Cratchit. He is the saintly head of a poor family, exemplifying the questionable blessedness of poverty. But of course, that's no great honor either, as Tevye reminds God in "Fiddler on the Roof." Mrs. Cratchit represents that withering viewpoint in "A Christmas Carol" in the vivid performance of Jennifer Johansen.

 Artzberger and Johansen share with several other cast members the duties of several lesser roles each. (With assistance from the show's sound design, Artzberger is also a crucial warning presence as Marley's Ghost, the business-partner figure who triggers the parade of bad dreams that humble Scrooge.) 

Linda Pisano's costume designs reach their summit in the dazzling appearance of Maria Argentina

Representing the persistence of merriment: Sean Blake as Christmas Present

Souza as Christmas Past and Sean Blake as Christmas Present. Each acts as an illuminating guide to  the gradually aware, and sometimes reluctantly reminiscent, Scrooge as he surveys his regrettable past as well as the world in which he's fallen asleep, oblivious to its deep concerns. A hush settled over the audience particularly in the strained dialogue the old man witnesses between Young Scrooge (Elliot Sagay) and his crestfallen fiancee, Belle (Caroline Chu). 

The production sustains its customary flow with the smooth use of trapdoors on the raked stage and the deft textural variety lent by narrative choral speaking yielding to dialogue and back. Haas' skill in preserving Dickens' narrative voice while the story moves forward in stage action continues to be valid. From when we first hear that Marley was "as dead as a doornail, to begin with," we are sensitized to a masterpiece that drives home obvious as well as subtle truths. The permanence of myth is no accident, as IRT is appropriately keen to remind us every year with  "A Christmas Carol."

[Photos by Zach Rosing]