By Gretchen Crowe
Herald Staff Writer
(From the issue of 12/9/04)

What could already be said about "A Christmas Carol" that you don’t already know? Probably not much. Ebenezer Scrooge, three spirits, Tiny Tim. We all know it so well. And yet at Ford’s Theatre in downtown Washington, director Matt August manages to place a unique spin on this timeless story.

It’s hard not to be impressed when walking into Ford’s Theatre. The compact and decorative building, converted into a theater in 1861, is rich with the history of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and with 143 years of theatrical culture. As the play, adapted by Michael Wilson with the slightly different title of "A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story of Christmas," opens, Charles Dickens (played by Martin Rayner) welcomes the audience, giving a special nod to the president’s box. With his introduction, Dickens sets the stage for a theater-going experience that lives up to the stage’s acclaimed history.

For those of you who don’t know the story — bah humbug on you — Ebenezer Scrooge (also played by Rayner) is a miserly man who has spent his entire life earning and hoarding money. Desperate to avoid poverty, Scrooge blocks out the rest of the world and focuses solely on himself and his work. The Christmas spirit is especially lost on Scrooge, who spent many Christmases as a child away from family and friends.

In this version, Scrooge uses Christmas Eve as an opportunity to collect from three vendors who owe him money. Not having the necessary cash, they each give him something they have made, which he reluctantly and temporarily accepts as payment.

After spending his Christmas Eve taking from those who have nothing, Scrooge is haunted in his home by a chained Jacob Marley, his former partner (played by Michael Goodwin), who warns him that if he continues his selfish and greedy lifestyle, Scrooge will be doomed to the same eternity of misery and unrest that Marley is now suffering.

Marley foretells the coming of three spirits who will haunt Scrooge during the night. When the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future arrive, they look vaguely familiar. They are, in fact, the same vendors from whom Scrooge collected earlier that evening. Cleverly and ironically, it is these three people who have nothing — and from whom Scrooge takes everything — who change his life.

The creativity was very impressive. Christmas carols sung by the cast masked scene changes and the movement of props off and on stage. The back wall of the set spun around revealing pop-out houses for an instant London setting of warmly lit houses that Scrooge walks through as he collects from his debtors.

In this visually stimulating adaptation, the audience was able to determine Scrooge’s character from the opening scene, where he sits protectively on a huge pile of locked chests of money in an office spared from the warmth — and expense — of coal. Meanwhile, Bob Cratchit, Scrooge’s low-paid clerk, works in mittens and an overcoat while huddled over the stove. With Scrooge elevated at his 15-foot desk, he is clearly placed in the position of power.

When Marley visits Scrooge, he is tethered to chains that stretch off stage and behind the scenes, controlling and restricting his movement. The audience gets a very visual sense that he is not at all at peace or free to come and go.

Loud lightning blots, a fog machine and the use of echoes also fuel the senses and add to the suspense of a well-known story.

With the use of the vendors as the spirits, Wilson and August’s production also highlights the question of the spiritual encounters. Did the spirits truly visit Scrooge, or was the whole experience simply a dream brought on by a lifetime of greed and initiated by three encounters on Christmas Eve?

These questions, along with the creative, original and familiar, yet not-so-familiar, components of Ford Theatre’s adaptation of "A Christmas Carol," make the production a unique and enjoyable Christmas experience for all — first-timers and Dickens-lovers alike.