Drama Dock’s...A Christmas Carol

It is the many themes surrounding Christmas-time that makes the season resonate so deeply within the collective heart. Hope, generosity, reconciliation, forgiveness, forbearance, family, kindness, and a sense of place within a community touches on but a few of the many mosaic pieces that collectively constitute the image of Christmas in our memories, hearts and minds. The season has its own music and traditions, its food and drink, its smells and colors, trappings and decorations. It is a glowing, twinkling, swirling snowstorm raining down emotions and sensations all around us like the eddying drifts in an old snow globe on a mantelpiece above a whispering fire.

For me, the sharpest shard of Christmas is a small piece of framed needlepoint, designed and made by my mother who rests now with my father and grandparents in Vashon Cemetery now these many years. It reads:

All hearts go home for Christmas
Across the miles and years...
To live again the age-old joys
That passing time endears.

I can’t even read the words aloud let alone describe the hurricane of sharp-focused sense-memories and feelings that this bit of verse on fabric brings forth in my mind.

Such is the power of Christmas to those of us that love it, and vastly more beyond these simple, personal thoughts.

Another tradition of Christmas is to attempt to capture some of these themes in Christmas stories, to frame them in a way only a story can. "A Miracle on 34th St.", "It’s a Wonderful Life", "A Christmas Story", "The Littlest Angel", "White Christmas" and so on, all incorporate aspects of Christmas themes and values, all striking chords in our hearts in mysterious and surprisingly deep ways, drenched in maudlin sappiness though they may sometimes be. I must sheepishly admit that "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and "A Charlie Brown Christmas" are also harbingers of Christmas for me simply because I’ve been watching them near Christmas for half a century and just a little bit more.

The very epitome of the Christmas story must be Charles Dickens’ "A Christmas Carol", the archetype of all popularized Christmas stories that have followed it in the more than a century and a half since it was originally published on the 17th of December, 1843.

Poring through at least a dozen scripted variations of the story, Drama Dock Artistic Director Elizabeth Ripley has chosen a version of the classic story that preserves the traditional aspects of its structure while at the same time introducing a slight variation appropriate to a stage version of the story. Jacob Marley is elevated from his position as a mere augury of ghostly visits yet to come to encompass the narrative aspects and to take a much more active role in the conversion of Scrooge from miser to philanthropist.

A particularly interesting and inventive aspect of this production is Ms. Ripley’s decision to rely almost exclusively on projected staging elements for the set design, projected images being a constituent element of what is known as Multimedia Theater. Within the context of Drama Dock, Ms. Ripley first invited experimentation with projections in the production of "Enchanted April" with her colleague Adam Brock who holds a Masters in Multimedia Theater Arts from Suny College. Subsequently, she carried the projection technique further in the recent production of "The Rocky Horror Show". In "A Christmas Carol", the actors will interact onstage with a collection of projections created by Christopher Overstreet, who also has a great deal of experience in Multimedia Theater. It was Christopher Overstreet with whom Ms. Ripley worked on projections used in "The Rocky Horror Show".

When asked if the increasing use of projections within Drama Dock productions constituted any sort of trend, Ms. Ripley said, "Not particularly. It’s just a matter of coincidental timing. Multimedia Theater was simply something that was fun and interesting to experiment with and my work with it happens to coincide with the desire to bring something novel and inventive for the Island to experience in a beloved traditional Christmas story."

As another intriguing element of the current production, of the cast of 30 performers in the show, approximately 18 are children, some of whom are as young as 8. Younger versions of Scrooge himself as well as his sister Fran are played by children.

See Drama Dock’s production of Israel Horovitz’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’ "A Christmas Carol: Scrooge and Marley", performances at the Blue Heron.

Dec. 15th Final Dress/Preview, curtain at 7:30 PM.

Evening performances at 7:30 PM on Dec 16, 17, 22, 23, 26.

Matinees at 2:00 PM on Dec 18 & 24.

Dir. Christopher Ott; Artistic Dir. Elizabeth Ripley; Costuming Patricia Kelly & Lieschan Lopuszynski; Polka Mistress March Twisdale; DG Video Effects Richard E. Montague; Digital Effects Supervisor Christopher Overstreet; Graphic Designer Lillian Ripley.