A Christmas Carol Broadway Reviews

Mays keeps it in his way, doing so with co-adapters Susan Lyons and Michael Arden, production conceivers Arden and scenic designer Dane Laffrey, director Arden, lighting designer Ben Stanton, sound designer Joshua D. Reid, projection designer Lucy Mackinnon, and hair, wig, and makeup designer Cookie Jordan. What the endlessly imaginative group has created is a Christmas present so big it wouldn't even fit under the storys-tall tree in Rockefeller Center. It requires much more capitalization than something like famous Christmas Carol-presenting Simon Callow standing at a lectern. Which is an observation meant to emphasize that the must-see package may not show up everywhere (or anywhere?) other than large houses where pounds and shillings flow.

Every year at holiday time, theater goes to the Dickens. So many Christmas Carols ring out annually on the stages of New York that the sheer volume can be confounding: Can anyone manage to make this Victorian chestnut seem fresh again? I confess that I went to the new Broadway production with a touch of trepidation, prepared to roll my jaded eyes and mutter “humbug!” under my breath. Instead, my breath was plumb taken away. This splendid production is a Christmas miracle: The most theatrically fulfilling account of A Christmas Carol that I have ever seen.

There are more than the usual number of miracles to be observed with the latest version of A Christmas Carol to hit Broadway. The usual suspects are here, all the ghosts and spirits and flights over ye olde town and all the witnessing of things past, present and future. And there's the miracle of one man - the great Jefferson Mays - breathing life into more than 50 characters and having us believe every single shift. And there's the perhaps more - if only slightly more - quotidian miracle of a creative team - directors of lighting and sound and costumes and projections - at the tops of their games coming together to create gobsmacking theater magic, a blessing director Michael Arden's Carol has in great bounty.

But those are minor quibbles about the transfixing production with its virtuosic solo performance (another actor, Danny Gardner, appears briefly as “The Spectre”) and dazzling stage wizardry that would give Harry Potter a run for his money. This Christmas Carol may not be the most exuberant or sentimental one you’ve ever encountered, but it will certainly prove one of the most memorable.

It’s easy to get a little humbug: Another holiday season, another take on A Christmas Carol. Like other theatrical versions of the classic, this one ends with the same words credited to Tiny Tim – “God bless us, everyone.” But a production this taut and well-told is its own sort of blessing.

The noir-like design for the show by Dane Laffrey, though, is really something, and its sudden visual tricks and life-affirming pleasures far exceed what most people would expect from a one-person show. Joshua D. Reid’s sound offers as visceral and riveting a sonic affair as any show currently on Broadway.

Playing both narrator and all the characters is no small feat-as reflected by the warm standing ovation for Mays the night this critic attended. But the magic of this production, adapted by Mays, Susan Lyons, and director Michael Arden, is down a lot to Laffrey's stupendous stage design, which is a riot of trickery and surprises, Ben Stanton's lighting, and Joshua D. Reid's sound design.

Having seen the performer's facial expressions in close-up (like the close-ups in most of the photographs and videos on this page, but not on the stage of the Nederlander), I couldn't help wondering whether a 1,200-seat Broadway theater was the ideal venue to showcase this performer's talents. The dim lighting and occasional total darkness had a different effect when so many of the audience (not all of them in the far-away seats) were already straining to follow what has happening on stage. This is why the design is so important. And it is sometimes surprising; at climactic moments, awesome. Indeed, the sets and especially the lighting threatened at times to swallow up Jefferson Mays. Like many a scene partner, the design seemed on occasion to try to upstage the star.

And the direction is very fine. Arden has become a Broadway regular since his revival of 'Spring Awakening' in 2015, and 'A Christmas Carol' is his strongest and most confident work to date. Every idea connects seamlessly with the next, and never settles into Scrooge-control. The performance builds and builds, surprising us all along the way. The director also shows a flair for breathtaking stage pictures that was not so evident in his recent City Center revival of 'Parade' that plans to come to Broadway. Even if you're a Scrooge when it comes to annual holiday fare, like I am, 'A Christmas Carol' succeeds as a strong piece of theater.

For all its dizzying charms, the overstuffed show doesn't quite deliver on what really counts - the three Spirits of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Future, as they conjure up visions to terrify Scrooge into changing his parsimonious ways. Here the individual spirits don't really come alive (ahem), and their visions feel rushed on and off the stage. I can't help wondering how Dickens the performer managed to breathe life into the characters created by Dickens the novelist. (They say he waved his arms a lot and became quite bombastic.) Mays does none of that corny stuff, but for all the theatrical magic he makes on his own, he really could use a bit more help.

A Christmas Carol, as conceived by Arden and scenic designer Diane Laffrey and adapted by Arden and Susan Lyons, weaves between the shock of spectacle like that sudden outage and the nimble close-up magic-like theatrics that Mays can accomplish on his own. He plays all the roles, from the jowly Scrooge to a tight-shouldered Tiny Tim, while also serving as the narrator. (It’s the mode of Carol-ing also performed by Patrick Stewart.) Arden and Laffrey often egg on the transformations with dramatic shifts in lighting (by Ben Stanton), but often that’s unnecessary. The spectacle of theatrical magic is less interesting than the spectacle Mays can conjure on his own.

Mays’ poignant performance; however, was somewhat marred by an excess of effects. The vocal augmentation put on the actor’s voice often made it difficult to make out the words he was saying. The video projections that indicate some of the background characters in Scrooge’s past, also felt unnecessary, if not distracting. There were also moments when I found it hard to concentrate on the narrative because of the overwhelming sensory experiences. In short, the production would’ve been more compelling had it favored simplicity rather than over-illustrating the storytelling with bells and whistles.

Creepy and antic, gloomy and giddy, Michael Arden's production capitalizes on every trick in Dickens's story and then pulls a few new ones out of Scrooge's top hat. Peace on earth? Mercy mild? Please. There are moments when you would swear that Mays couldn't possibly be unaccompanied, so raucous is this 'Carol.' But he is, more or less. (Danny Gardner briefly joins as a wordless specter.) Happily, Mays - who has also triumphed in multiple roles in 'I Am My Own Wife,' for which he won a Tony Award, and 'A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder' - is a master of manifold parts. If he were left alone, without lights, sound, projections or Dane Laffrey's curving, swerving set, he might put across this fable even more convincingly.

This 'Christmas Carol' comes to an early climax - perhaps too early for the show's own good - when Scrooge is visited by the ghost of Marley, his old business partner in miserliness and nitpicking contempt for humanity. No two actors could achieve what Mays, Stanton and Arden offer up here: the suddenly meek and frightened Scrooge bathed in warm candle light one minute, the commanding and devouring Marley drenched in green stench only a second later. How can any 'Christmas Carol' ever top that kind of theatrical tour de force? The adaptation by Mays, Arden and Susan Lyons never quite rises to the terrifying depths of this encounter between Scrooge and Marley. The production continues to be worth watching, but the humbug curmudgeons in the audience might wonder if maybe, despite the show's theme of stinginess, another actor or two could be hired to handle some of the lighter lifting of Dickens' less indelible characters.

Unlike the 2019 Broadway production of “A Christmas Carol” or the long-running production many years ago at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, both of which were enlivened by music, this version (adapted by Mays, his wife Susan Lyons, and Arden) is pure, serious storytelling. As a result, the show often feels like Mays is reading the book to us, which can occasionally have the unintended effect of lulling one to sleep -- especially given how dark the theater often is.

'Marley was dead,' booms the commanding voice of stage icon Jefferson Mays, here taking on Scrooge, the narrator and every role besides. (Mays wrote the nearly one-man adaptation alongside Arden and Susan Lyons.) He skulks out of total blackness, barely visible at first, seeming an apparition from the beyond in Ben Stanton's masterful lighting. The stage will barely brighten through all the standard Christmas Carol table setting-'Bah Humbug,' etc. Mays' Scrooge drifts through these introductory scenes like a ghost himself, all but dead to the world already. Jefferson Mays can be, to put it mildly, a bit of a ham. But here, Mays brings a soft touch to a mammoth assignment. Shifting between multiple characters within the same scene, from ghost to narrator to Tiny Tim, he slides gracefully between personas with little more than a head tilt or the slightest of vocal modulations. There are a few grander moments as well, of course, but for the most part Mays keeps it grounded. His Fezziwig is an especially endearing creation, and his narrator's open-heartedness is often moving in its own right.

Arden moves his subject forward through each of Dickens' staves, but the production arrives nowhere. There is no unique point of view or revelation from this solo 'Carol,' which puts Mays' malleability to waste. The production skews gloomier than most modern retellings. A casket taunts us from center stage before the show begins. Then, a loud, booming sound (design by Joshua D. Reid) shocks us into action. Courtesy of lighting designer Ben Stanton, deep shadows envelop the stage - an effect which successfully relays a cinematic-like quality of ominousness, but unsuccessfully keeps its audience awake.