"Especially delightful...a charming play"

December 10, 2006 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.

It is a joy to be able to state that not only is Eric Hill’s adaptation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol now playing in the Unicorn at the BTF until December 23 a delight but will also become an annual event.

The cast in Berkshire Theatre Festival's
production of A Christmas Carol
Photo: Kevin Sprague

Dickens’ theme of the redemptive power of kindness, giving and love rings out loud and clear as the talented cast of twenty two actors, most playing multiple roles, weave in and out of the scenes that flow not only on the handsomely appointed stage but up and down the aisles and onto the wing balconies.

The versatile setting, which one can admire in detail before the play opens, not only spans the stage but soars up to the fly gallery and expands to include the wing areas on both sides of the stage. It is gray London of Victoria’s England, buildings crowded everywhere with multiple doors, windows that light up (and even reverse to indicate exterior and interior scenes) and peopled with marvelously clad Victorian citizens, rich and poor.

The cast is led by Hill himself, a beak-nosed curmudgeon who through a series of ghostly encounters with four spirits is transformed into a jolly benevolent spry old man who orders a turkey so big for the Crachits’ Christmas dinner that it must be carted in on a sled.

He is abetted by a lively, well-cast group of actors including actors from the BTF family, Brandeis and U Conn drama students and delightful local children—one recognizes many of the faces. The stage is awash with the comings and goings of these, so rightly clad for their Victorian, setting that one wishes to praise them all but has space for only a few.

Especially delightful are the children, the four talented Stantons, seen previously in local productions, and two local school children Charlotte Sands-Berking and Nate Stump (a stolid Tiny Tim.)

Marley’s ghost as a door knob is probably the most frightening and the ghost of Christmas present, a boisterous green clad Santa spirit, the most dynamic. Naya Chang, music director and violinist on a high balcony during most of the play, leaves her post to become the final ghost, that of Christmas future, who scares Scrooge into repentance and change. None of them should frighten children in the audience, although they evoke the supernatural.

E. Gray Simons III (who co-directed the play with Hill) handles multiple roles with ease, Carl Sprague gets credit for the fantastic set , Jessica Risser-Milne for the costumes, and J Hagenbuckle has seen to it that the eerie sounds are all they should be.

As Dickens’ himself, sometimes narrator, (at others, playing several different characters) Joshua Davis keeps the pace moving along and the transitions seamless.

At Christmas time it is well to see a play in which a man who in his youth has hardened himself to the cries of the unfortunate, but who ultimately, ghost visited, finds love and joy and a sense of how we all need to care for others.

This is a charming play.

Thank you BTF and a Merry Christmas to you all.

Berkshire Theatre Festival  |  berkshiretheatre.org
P.O. Box 797, Stockbridge, MA 01262
Administration Offices: 413-298-5536; FAX:413-298-3368
E-mail:info@berkshiretheatre.org