Familiar and off-beat: ‘A Christmas Carol’ thru Chicago Fringe Opera, and ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ at Paramount Theatre
Aaron Short. Photo by A. Deran Photography.
‘Tis the season to take your pick of (Charles) Dickens, straight or with a twist. And I don’t know about you, but when I caught wind of Chicago Fringe Opera’s one-man Christmas Carol being staged in a cemetery chapel, I figured if there was going to be one adaptation to cover this season, it should be this one. It’s a short run, but it deserves to make many a return.
At the very least, if a nighttime stroll through a cemetery is something to take off your bucket list, it’s can’t-miss. Rosehill Cemetery, our gracious host, is keeping a gate open after hours for patrons to get to Horatio May Chapel in the middle of the grounds.
Per Michael Weidman, CFO’s liaison with Rosehill, there are nearly two hundred thousand people buried here, a decent fraction of whom were alive when A Christmas Carol was first published. Between that bit of knowledge, as well as the fullish moon and many stars in full view overhead as I walked in—and, of course, the sheer still of it all—sobriety was very much called for. I was thus perfectly prepared to hear straightaway that Marley was dead.
150 years of other adaptations and spoofs may make it easy to forget that Carol is primarily a ghost story. (There is certainly more mention of fog than snow, to say nothing of it initially being subtitled “A Ghost Story”.) Composer Iain Bell and librettist Simon Callow have shaved off a lot of those 150 years, presenting something not too dissimilar to Dickens’ own solo bare-bones readings of his novella. A single strolling player in the guise of most-capable tenor Aaron Short—singing every role, from Scrooge on down—a modest trunk of props, and enough lambent light are all we need.
Effective as Bell’s score is—dodging the warm and cozy tonics and cadences of seasonal music at every turn, trembling as if it were trying to warm itself fireside—it’s Dickens’ text that reigns supreme. Heard anew, even, unencumbered by holly, figgy pudding, and prize turkeys. I can’t conceive of any other Carol that could possibly be as distraction-free. (Stage direction by George Cederquist; conducted by Anthony Barrese.)
And, certainly, Bob Cratchit’s bit about finding a verdant-enough grave spot for Tiny Tim lands that much more pointedly in these environs.
But rest assured, like it has for 150 years, Scrooge’s heart thumps anew and Tiny Tim does not die.
Not yet, at least. Fellow-passengers to the grave, we all be. My walk out of the cemetery was just as tranquil, but that much stiller.
A Christmas Carol runs through Dec. 3 at 5800 N. Ravenswood Ave. For tickets or more information, please visit chicagofringeopera.com.
The Company. Photo by Liz Lauren.
I saw the Broadway production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory back in 2017, and I was more than happy to leave it to the Vermicious Knids. Generally charmless, I thought, it served to prove that adapting Roald Dahl is not a task to take up lightly, even for all his impishness.
To their credit, David Greig (book) and Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (original songs) have since adjusted the recipe, swapping out songs and lines here and there. If the turnout at Paramount at my performance was any indication, they may just have the makings of an eccentric holiday perennial. Though, even after the changes made, it’ll still help if you don’t think too much about it as it goes down. You know, just like any other sugary seasonal treat.
Charlie lives unavoidably in the shadow of the 1971 film adaptation of Dahl’s book. Not just because Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse’s songs have been carried over here, but also because 50 years of homage and parody have rendered the tale somewhat schematic. Meet the good-hearted and prodigiously imaginative but impoverished Charlie (Meena Sood at my performance, alternating with Charlie Long). Meet Willy Wonka (Stephen Schellhardt), the fantastical chocolatier no one can quite draw a bead on, who has invited Charlie and four other kids into his factory. Meet those four others, rotten dullards to the core and each ensnared by their cardinal vices.
Of course, familiarity shouldn’t be a demerit against holiday tales, but the adapters ought to bring their own special sauce to their telling. But even Shaiman and Wittman’s citrusy tang, found elsewhere in their oeuvre, becomes pastiche-ily predictable: glutton Augustus Gloop gets Bavarian oom-pah; gum-chewing Violet Beauregard gets pop (get it?); brat par excellence Veruca Salt (here a Russian) gets Tchaikovsky; and techie menace Mike Teavee gets acidic rock. Alternate their quickie introductions with scenelets of Charlie keeping a stiff upper lip, and you basically have the first act right there. So goes the second act in much the same order. Greig, meanwhile, scatters little gleefully morbid one-liners throughout his script like raisins in dough, but he never quite sustains an atmosphere where that wickedness healthily exists as the yang to the yin of innocence.
(It’s also a small dramaturgical nit to pick, but: Letting Charlie duet with Wonka during “Pure Imagination” makes sense, as the show really plays up their kindred spiritedness. Letting the rotten kids join in, however briefly, makes less sense—there is no life they know that could compare to pure imagination because they don’t know what imagination is to begin with.)
All that said, Trent Stork has a firm-enough hand on the material they have to work with and has done what they could—a lot in tandem with Schellhardt’s casting, no doubt—to ride out the more abrupt tonal shifts. (Schellhardt, lest it be lost in all this, is excellent—steely, yet as bendy as taffy.) The physical production is certainly a brightly-colored wow, particularly Jeffrey D. Kmiec’s go at the Wonka factory. And there are some delectable picks from the chocolate box of new songs—Wonka’s “It Must Be Believed to Be Seen”, which closes the first act and closes his guests inside the factory with him, is a vampily menacing koan that fits perfectly in the character’s mouth.
So you might not find a Golden Ticket in that chocolate bar you bought, but, hey, at worst, you still have chocolate. It’s all up to taste, I suppose.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory runs through Jan. 14, 2024 at 23 E. Galena Blvd., Aurora, IL. For tickets or more information, please call (630) 896-6666 or visit paramountaurora.com.
For more reviews on this or other shows, please visit theatreinchicago.com.