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 "I have endeavored in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it." Thus reads the author's dedication to his most popular work, A Christmas Carol, written in six weeks and published in December, 1843. Dickens's masterpiece, bound in red cloth with both full-color illustrations and woodcuts, sold for five shillings and more than six thousand copies were purchased by Christmas Eve, with two thousand more of the second and third editions immediately planned; the "little scheme" (as he wrote in a letter) he had to make money to ease his debts as well as to rail against the increasing greed around him transformed into something larger-than-life even for Dickens, whose wildly successful career had changed the nature of the novelist from a private figure into a public celebrity. Thackeray noted, "It seems to me a national benefit, and to every man or woman who reads it a personal kindness."

A Christmas Carol was written in a self-induced trance-throughout are personal references to Dickens's past, his humble childhood and a sense of what poverty can do in adulthood-and if we do not notice or know of the details we still sense the effects, so powerful and headstrong is the prose. Just as he underlined "The End" three times in the manuscript, so too the emotion of creation feels underlined. And so charged is the story that even in a dramatic adaptation, like the annual Kansas City Repertory Theatre's version, it needs little in the way of ghostwriting to improve it. Indeed, a stage production may be the best way to go-certainly better than the foundering movies and TV versions, full of clinking songs and magic-of-Christmas performances-because the story is essentially a communal experience. Dickens himself was a well-known actor, who performed one-man versions of his work; I imagine him cheering on the Rep's version, appreciative of its shared past spirit in performances present and future.

As directed by Linda Ade Brand once again, the show is a showcase for Kansas City talent. She loads up the stage with a cast brimming with energy that can fill the multifarious characters' outsize characteristics. Gary Neal Johnson's Scrooge spends most of the time in a bed shirt and tasseled cap; he strikes a balance between Scrooge as King Lear wandering in delirium and Scrooge as a lost tourist hoping for directions. Johnson's role leaves him to react, which he does effortlessly, drawing both the other actors and the audience (in the preview I attended) to his onstage presence. After so many performances, Scrooge's character ought to be diluted, like Willy Loman or Blanche DuBois; that he is not is partly the power of the original character as written by Dickens-"I feel my power now more than I ever did," he wrote in a letter to his good friend John Forster, just a month before setting forth A Christmas Carol-and partly the actor's ability to shoulder thousands of different performances and perceptions on him. Johnson's Scrooge befits a man who needs only a nudge to reform, and brings everyone with him.

Dickens wrote an annual Christmas tale: what distinguishes this one is its ferocious appeal for change. Peter Ackroyd in his biography countenances that Dickens was not religious, nor was the work intended as a church sermon. He was possessed by the idea of transformation; it is inherent in novels such as David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, and Martin Chuzzlewit, the dark drama of family fortune that he was writing in 1843 and having trouble finding its rhythm. The elements that strike us most readily-Scrooge's dour comic relationship with Bob Cratchit; his terror at humanity's touch; the readiness of the three Ghosts to take Scrooge through his life-form the core of A Christmas Carol. It was personal to him and for it to be successful it must be personal to us. If the miserly theme in Martin Chuzzlewit gave him pause, it burst through pointedly in the smaller story; the Rep's faithful adaptation (by Barbara Field) keeps the humbug alive. The production, though, with its deft touch of a rising and lowering stage, the author (played by Robert Gibby Brand) as roving narrator, and cast members moving from the aisles to the stage, lifts the story from the ghostly to the friendly. The use of the cast members, such as Merles Moores and Ruby Dibble, in multiple roles adds to the ensemble quality. After all, Scrooge's nightmare is peopled by individuals he knows; why not us? His nightmare is our dream for two hours that things really can change. The Rep ought to repeat the play until everyone in Kansas City wakes up one morning like Scrooge thinking, Yes, we can.
 

REVIEW:
A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens
Runs November 22 - December 27
Call or visit the website for performance times.
Spencer Theatre, 4949 Cherry, Kansas City, MO
For tickets call 816-235-2700 or online at www.kcrep.org

By Steve Shapiro

Theatre Contributor (Past writer)
Steve Shapiro has been writing about the arts for over twenty-five years. He wrote and broadcast a weekly radio book review on KCUR-FM for ten years, and has contributed to NPR's Morning Edition book segment.

As a contributor to local publications such as KCMetropolis.org, KC Tribune.com, The Kansas City Star, Review, The Pitch, and Helicon 9, he has published essays and criticism on art, books, cinema, theater and the cultural Zeitgeist.

A chapter on the museum architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Steven Holl was published in the anthology, The Sixth Surface: Steven Holl Lights the Nelson-Atkins Museum (2007). On the side, he juggles Dachshunds and is available to moderate book groups.