As Ever, Long Beach Playhouse’s “A Christmas Carol” Warms the Heart in Our Cold, Cruel World

An experiment: every December go to a traditionalist take on A Christmas Carol put on by a particular theatre company, each time slightly new, with a different director and cast, every year on the exact same stage in the same cold freight car of a theater space with a new huddled mass of fellow passengers to the grave, together being reminded that humankind(ness) is our business.

For decades, the Long Beach Playhouse has provided just such a setup, and I’ve been a willing test subject for the last several (six? seven? ten?) years. Here’s where we’re at….

You know the story, right? Scrooge, rich in pocket but poor of heart, is shown the error of his humbug ways via a series of ghostly visitations (Christmases Past/Present/Future, plus his poor old miserly partner Jacob Marley), then turns it all around in time to save Tiny Tim from early death, and “God bless us, everyone!”

This year’s staging is as bare bones as it gets. The “Scrooge & Marley” shingle. Scrooge’s desk and chair on a little dais by their lonesome. The floating head/neck of an iron lamppost. A cobblestone promenade. Swap out the dais with Scrooge’s simple platform bed. Now and then a prop (quill, book, crutch). Simple as can be.

This lack of physical encumbrance allows — maybe demands — special attention to the blocking, and with no flash whatsoever director Philip Brickey makes quite a bit of the opportunity. Dividing the LB Playhouse long Main Stage into thirds (up, middle, down), Brickey keeps the cast mindful of grounding — or even entirely playing — a particular scene within a particular swath. On occasion there’s even another level of depth slices within a swath (at least as played to the downstage audience — see, for example, the tableau of young Scrooge (Chaz Breithaupt) breaking up with his girlfriend (Lisa Caperton) while old Scrooge looks, his horrified countenance placed expertly between the profiles of his younger self and his would-have-been love. Wonderful stuff.

Long Vo’s lighting is no flashier than Brickey’s blocking yet no less particular. Teal, salmon, and lavender provide a quiet motif, which is perfectly overthrown to correlate with Scrooge’s mental state at just the right time.

Although Brickey’s adaptation of A Christmas Carol may cut too much meat off the bone, here and there he manages to include stuff we don’t usually hear, which is nice. His direction of the actors is a mixed bag. Give him credit for coming at some of Dickens’s lines from different angles that I’ve seen before in the Playhouse’s traditionalist take (yes, to some degree if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all, but the angel’s in the details), even if the result is uneven. But some of what works really does. The best example here is Chaz Breithaupt’s performance as Scrooge’s nephew, Freddie. Sure, any Fred worth his salt is going to have a bon vivant vibe, but Breithaupt injects an extra bit of vigor. He even gave a new reading to my favorite line, uttering it with a flourish after pausing for thought to emphasize the empathy that hits you when you accept/realize that we are all one: “I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were . . . fellow-passengers to the grave and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”

There’s only so much you can do with a straightforward adaptation of A Christmas Carol. This year Long Beach Playhouse is trying a few new nuances within that narrow framework. Although not everything works, nothing gets in the way of the source material’s innate richness. So come get your new dose of Dickens to inoculate yourself against the virus of hard-hearted humbuggery that’s out there in force this winter.

A Christmas Carol at Long Beach Playhouse
Times: Thurs–Sat 8:00 p.m., Sun 2:00 p.m.
The show runs through Dec. 23.
Cost: $14 to $24
Details: (562) 494-1014; LBplayhouse.org 
Venue: Long Beach Playhouse, 5021 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach