“A Christmas Carol In The Dark” reviewed by Julia W. Rath

 Highly Recommended ***** As theaters are darkened due to the pandemic, there springs a light eternal. It’s a masterful and compelling adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”, which is now being told in a new audio play by Theatre in the Dark. True to its original source material, “A Christmas Carol in the Dark” is the latest iteration of the classic novella, which can be accessed online via Zoom. Adapter Mack Gordon serves as the show’s director and works hand-in-glove with Corey Bradberry, the stage manager and sound engineer, to create this 75-minute broadcast that could not have been done any better! We are told upfront to find a dark and cozy spot in a room, and sit back and envision a story that we are all familiar with. In this way, we can relive mid-19th century London through the web of our own imagination.

Most impressive is how a cast of four people—two men and two women—exude so much expression as they change their voices to suit the various characters they play. Bradberry stars as the crotchety and miserly Ebenezer Scrooge in a sparkling performance. Gordon plays Bob Cratchit, Scrooge’s nephew Fred, and others. Sarah Althen performs as the Spirit of Christmas Past, Belle, and the Cratchit children. Kathleen Puls Andrade personifies the Spirit of Christmas present, Mrs. Fezziwig, and Mrs. Cratchit. Three narrators are involved in this retelling, known as Heart (Andrade), Brain (Gordon), and Legs (Althen), all of whom read the descriptions of sets and characters and explain how Scrooge takes part in the action. The rotating narrative is very inventive: It captures our attention and holds our interest.

Gordon has devised the adaptation so that the ghost of Jacob Marley is made up of three voices blended together, plus the phantom-induced sound of the wind. The foreshadowing of three spirits in one (as the combined Spirit of Christmas Past, Spirit of Christmas Present, and Spirit of Christmas-Yet-to-Come) is brilliant and adds another dimension to the text. The blend of characters points to Scrooge’s eventual reformation when he embraces Christmas—past, present, and future—together in his heart and vows to keep it all year. I don’t know if the three simultaneous voices that make up Marley’s ghost are a prerecorded roll-in, but something brilliant was done to accomplish this, considering that Zoom defers to the “speaker view”, and sounds from different Zoom boxes cannot overlap. In general, combining voice, sound effects, and music contemporaneously is a major challenge on Zoom for a live performance, and this production far exceeded expectations on a technical level.

Another challenge is how to go about putting together such a remote production in the first place. While Theatre in the Dark is a Chicago-based company, the actors perform separately from their respective homes in Chicago, Vancouver, and Philadelphia. We can observe their homemade soundproof booths—complete with scalloped foam padding and giant professional microphones—after the audio play is over and during the enlightening aftertalk. It is then when Andrade states that the biggest challenge of doing a live show on Zoom from four different locations is that there is a lag time between what you say and what you hear back. But the team worked on resolving this issue and figured it out with fantastic precision. Yet another challenge is how to take a show that was originally meant to be produced dark on stage with a 360-degree sound system and channel all of that audio into a full sound design for an online audience. The result is superb.

Jake Sorgen is the composer of the original music we hear during the preshow and postshow, as well as throughout the performance. This consists of lovely instrumental arrangements of traditional Christmas music as well as folk music from the 19th century. The cheerful melodies hold the presentation together, giving it a very special holiday touch. Nicely done!

The unrepentant Scrooge aspired to earn all the money in the world and took advantage of the liberty to do so with little conscience or regret. He cared nothing about the impact of his actions, especially with regard to its social and economic consequences on the people surrounding him. When Scrooge’s life story flashes before his eyes, he is struck by the full force of his deeds and what he has left undone. He feels the weight of his conscience all at once and realizes that life is not only about himself. “A Christmas Carol” is the story of the season: about how we need to look beyond our own petty interests and desires in favor of friends and family, if not also humanity as a whole. Perhaps today’s version of Scrooge is that of a grumpy old uncle sitting in the corner of a room who refuses to wear a mask when all of the other guests are busy social distancing. “It’s all about my liberty to do as I wish,” he would say. Hence the beauty of Dickens’ story is that it is indeed a historical piece that holds up very well in modern times. Even if we never were to meet the same Scrooge as the one who lived all those years ago, we can become cognizant that each of us has a bit of Scrooge within ourselves. There is no time like the present to make haste and think of the lives of others and their health and well-being too.

Theatre in the Dark’s audio production of “A Christmas Carol in the Dark” is available through December 24, 2020, for live streaming on Zoom through their website www.theatreinthedark.com.

The online performance schedule is as follows:

Thursdays – Saturdays at 8 pm CST
Sundays at 7 pm CST
with additional performances December 22 and 23 at 8 pm CST

All tickets are Pay-What-You-Can. ($20-$30 is recommended.)

To purchase tickets, please go to www.theatreinthedark.com.

For additional information on tickets, performances, and the show, please email info@theatreinthedark.com, or phone 312-285-0314, or go to www.theatreinthedark.com/contact and fill out the contact form.

After seeing the show, you are eligible to purchase a gift card of a ticket/link, starting at $12.50.

You can support Theatre in the Dark, starting at $10.00. Your gift can make all the difference in ensuring that shows like this one can continue on into the future.

To see what others are saying, visit wwwtheatreinchicago.com, go to Review Round-Up and click at “A Christmas Carol in the Dark”.