In a Wall Street Journal article about the stunningly lucrative nature of Christmas music, one executive likened holiday hits like Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” and Wham!’s “Last Christmas” to a “nice little ATM machine” that pops out cash at the end of every year, not just for the lifetime of the artist but, in the case of George Michael, well beyond.
Back in the 19th century, the equivalent of a LITE-FM playlist was a good gig reading your own work.
Charles Dickens certainly rode that particular Victorian-era gravy train, doing hugely successful live readings of “A Christmas Carol” for years beginning in 1853, traveling from Bolton to Boston and Newcastle to New York City. He rehearsed at length, came up with funny voices and even improvised from his own text in response to the reaction of his delighted audiences. He even came up with one of those “farewell” tours to juice business. “From these garish lights I vanish now for evermore,” he declared in 1870, “with a heartfelt, grateful, respectful, and affectionate farewell.” Sure.
Dickens may have said farewell, but we are stuck with his ubiquitous “A Christmas Carol.” Even a flood that ruined its set in August did not stop the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre from racing to build another one in time for opening night. Why? What gives with our obsession with this thing?
In its snarkier parts, Blake Montgomery’s “Charles Dickens Begrudgingly Performs ‘A Christmas Carol’ Again,” gets at that question. And there is a rather delicious cynicism loitering behind Montgomery’s solo show, which also lands a few licks at the expense of “that big theater downtown,” which trots out the title annually on the same set. A clown by trade and sardonic in attitude, Montgomery has for years mostly been both a highly skilled performer and a solo operator in the theater and that has given him some insight into what I’d call the cost of storytelling to the teller.
“Charles Dickens” is hardly the first show to probe that issue; one other example is “An Iliad,” a brilliant theater piece that imagines the price paid by a poet who feels honor-bound to repeat his story of the horrors of war for each successive generation, not that anybody ever actually listens. Working with the director Jonathan Berry, Montgomery doesn’t go that far, mostly because he also wants to have a warm-centered Christmas attraction. (He even has a little tea stand for audiences to help themselves.) So I don’t want to imply that his little show at Theater Wit is all about serving up succor for Grinches. Not at all; it’s quite sweet and fun, notwithstanding some dead air early on. (The show needs to lose 10 minutes of running time.)
But for those who want their annual dose of Scrooge and also the chance to chortle at the whole industrial complex surrounding him at the same time should find a happy middle here. Dolled up as Dickens (the resemblance is striking), Montgomery works out his issues (and some of ours) as he deconstructs our most resilient of seasonal fables while revealing that he is just as much a softie at the holidays as the rest of us. God bless us, every one.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
Review: “Charles Dickens Begrudgingly Performs ‘A Christmas Carol’ Again” (3 stars)
When: Through Dec. 28
Where: Theater Wit, 1229 Belmont Ave.
Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Tickets: $45 at 773-975-8150 and theaterwit.org
