A Christmas Carol - NSMT
Subject: Quicktake - "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens
Date: Sat, Dec 1, 11:32 PM
Quicktake on A CHRISTMAS CAROL
Practice makes perfect. Sometimes going back to an original concept does too. This year, North Shore Music Theatre's Artistic Director, Jon Kimbell, has taken the helm of their perennial seasonal show he helped create eighteen years ago. He's carefully reduced some of the extras added to A Christmas Carol - A Musical Ghost Story in recent years, but retained some old favorites. IRNE winner David Coffee returns as the area's most lovable Scrooge, IRNE winner Cheryl McMahon is once again his Cockney housekeeper, and Tom Staggs still soars overhead as the ghost of Jacob Marley.
The score based on traditional carols and songs has been tightened by music director Brian Cimmet, and only drops the "Pig" song from the final Stave. There's less DayGlo and a somber scary Ghost of Christmas Future played by Richard Gallagher, who also plays Young Scrooge. Robert Jason Jackson seen at the Huntington last season as Holofernes and on Broadway in "Aida" is a new towering Ghost of Christmas Present--still on stilts--and Teri Dale Hansen is a new and luminous Ghost of Christmas Past as well as Mrs. Cratchit. The show is narrated by Erik Grafton as grown up Timothy Cratchit, in shirtsleeves, and Australian Benjamin Howes, seen Off-Broadway in [title of the show] is Bob Cratchit. Mark Aldrich is back for a second year as Scrooge's nephew Fred and Briga Heelan, who started with NSMT's Youth Academy, plays both Fred's new wife Meg and young Scrooge's lost love Belle.
There's a bit more fog in old London Town, but the setting is much the same as previous productions.. The musician are again spread between two raised platforms and a visible pit. The ensemble is strong and the opening number includes the children of the company playing handbells. All in all the production emphasizes the humanity of the people in Dicken's story and gets the audience singing along with the curtain call's "We Wish You a Merry Christmas."
"A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens, Dates
North Shore Music Theatre at Dunham Woods
Beverly, MA , (978) 232-7200
North Shore Music Theatre
posted by will at 11:59 PM
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