There’s a bench, a few stools and sound effects. Otherwise, it’s Edge, Edge on the cutting edge.
Of Christmas, that is.
This holiday time, the little theater on the balcony is beaming audiences aboard “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol” by Tom Mula.
The itinerary: the known and unknown universe, pick ups and drop offs in London, early nineteen century and according to Charlie Dickens.
The mission impossible: for Scrooge’s dead business partner to rescue Scrooge from eternal damnation.
Prospects: zip.
But don’t get the wrong idea. Nothing akin to science fiction is going on in this fun-filled, character-driven, psyche-oriented comedy. The form is narrative, recited and acted out. The language is Dickensian. And figures and references from Dickens’ “Christmas Carol,” appear but just enough to keep you located and guessing. You never really know what is next.
That said, playwright Mula does play with mind, time, space, and life after death. And the story takes place as much out of this world as in and as much out of body as in. But it’s all healthy, with no preservatives added and with but one end in mind: to keep Christ in Christmas.
Brian Vyrostek is the man who leads the plan on stage.
Vyrostek is Jacob Marley. Also, he is Scrooge’s business partner, recently deceased; Scrooge’s nemesis and scourge; a dead man with a tale to tell. And as if all that weren’t enough, Vyrostek is also an everyman awakening after death to the hereafter.
Bare bones, Marley starts out disoriented, terrified, curious. He becomes a spirit with a spirit guide, is assigned a task and undertakes it. And the experience that follows, amounts pretty much to Marley on a quest within a mix of Dante, Virgil, pop metaphysics, mainstream movie-making and pop psychology. None of it particularly esoteric. All of it calculated to make laughs.
To Vyrostek’s credit, the world ahead and the world here are bridged; emotionally, at least, and for a time. His Marley is indeed, more so than Dickens’, a Marley to remember.
Nor is Melissa Timms’ bogle or spirit guide or goblin or genie any the less by comparison. Timms is playful, bad-tempered, even-keeled, funny, serious and all in all, all-around human.
Rich Wright as Scrooge is as good as some of the best around and in the depths to Scrooge that Wright has to plumb, better than any who haven’t played the role because he is charting unknown ground. No Scrooge before this one has made the same demands. Good job, Wright.
And Sara Trowbridge as a dispatcher of assignments for souls newly arrived is straight-faced, matter-of-fact and animated but precisely just enough to show you she knows what is going on.
Also, Trowbridge’s dispatcher gets credibility going into the hereafter. She is the first to appear natural in the supernatural. A contribution, don’t you think?
Be it noticed: this is a cast of four undertaking a multitudinous host of characters, a majority of which are Dickensian; God bless them every one.
It’s a trip. Buy a ticket.
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