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Culture Theatre

>>> A Christmas Carol

A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens, adapted by Michael Shamata (Soulpepper). At the Young Centre (50 Tank House). Runs to January 3 see website for schedule. $39-$89. 416-866-8666, soulpepper.ca. Rating: NNNN


Director Michael Shamata’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, a Soulpepper staple, is as robust as a hot toddy and as sweet and as a holiday candy cane.

In the company’s repertoire since 2001, the production tells the well-known narrative with a good dose of stage magic, actors playing multiple roles in a way that gets you thinking about the story and its heartfelt message in a new way.

This year, the plum role of Scrooge is shared between Joseph Ziegler, who originated the part with the company, and Oliver Dennis, who earlier played Bob Cratchit, his brow-beaten clerk. Ziegler – who’s also performing in Parfumerie, another Soulpepper revival, this year at the Bluma Appel Theatre rather than Soulpepper’s Distillery home – is also the remount director for Christmas Carol, and he’s maintained the show’s warmth and fascination for audiences young and old.

Dennis is a fine Scrooge, initially with a pinch on his face as well as in his voice his first “humbug” isn’t so much a comment as a curse. He’s condescending if not downright surly to anyone who finds Christmas appealing, until his visits with four ghosts turn him right around in his attitude to the season.

He grows incrementally in his understanding of the spirit of the holiday until his transformation at the end, when, bursting with boyish energy and comic joy at being alive, he sends a meal to the Cratchits and turns up unexpectedly at his nephew’s house. As he sheepishly remarks, “I am not the man I was.”

Seeing the show again is a reminder of how fine Shamata’s work is, both as adaptor and director. Staged in the round, it again features John Jarvis as Marley and the other three ghosts (in turn light, jovial and solemn) who visit Scrooge Julie Fox’s fine costumes define the characters as memorably as Jarvis’s performance.

As Scrooge wafts like a wraith through the worlds of the other characters, they occasionally deliver lines directly to him, as if they were instructing his better self to emerge from the crotchety miser.

Other pleasures in the show: Jordan Pettle as the new Cratchit, devoted to his family Matthew Edison as Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, and the young, bitter Scrooge Kevin Bundy as the cheery Mr. Fezziwig Maggie Huculak as Scrooge’s dour housekeeper and a few more happy figures Sarah Wilson as Scrooge’s lost love and Deborah Drakeford as the warm-hearted Mrs. Cratchit.

But the story wouldn’t succeed without a Scrooge who works his way into our hearts, and that’s exactly what Dennis does. He is, indeed, a newborn man by the end of the play, and that feels like a blessing shared between viewers and this favourite Dickens character.

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