A Christmas Carol

Austin Playhouse's A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol

Austin Playhouse, through Dec. 18

Running Time: 1 hr

State Theater Company's A Christmas Carol

State Theater, through Dec. 19

Running Time: 1 hr, 40 min

We've heard the story a thousand times, or feel like we have. The sharp, solitary miser. The dead partner wearing the chains he forged in life. The poor clerk. His poor clan. The little crippled boy as good as gold and better. The three spirits, like the magi of old, who come bearing gifts: visions of past, present, and future. The old soul newly born. The prize turkey, the raise in salary, and God bless us, every one. We know the tale too well, we think, to be taken in by it, much less moved. And yet how a 1,001st hearing affects us has everything to do with the story's telling and the actor inside the clothes of the miser. That may be seen in two rather different versions in our city right now, both of which illustrate the power still to be tapped from Charles Dickens' ghostly little book.

The Austin Playhouse production is as modest as the dwelling of Bob Cratchit. There is little scenery and no flashy effects; Sylvia Tate's costumes and Mark Novick's lighting contribute setting and mood without being showy. Generally, director Don Toner trusts his actors to create Dickens' London and the visions Scrooge encounters in the night, a strategy that, for the most part, is effective enough, especially in scenes with the Cratchits, where the spare furnishings reinforce how little they possess. The sense of familial affection that we get from these actors, children and adults, is radiated by the entire ensemble – 24 strong – fitting given how central family is to the Playhouse's identity. Sadly, the production moves at such a gallop that we're rarely allowed to savor it, and the actors have precious little time to explore emotion. This is most unfortunate regarding Tom Parker, whose Scrooge is one worth savoring. Parker has the flint of which Dickens speaks, a hardness and sharpness of feature and tone carved out of the miser's callousness and implacability; when angered, his Scrooge is a fearsome figure. But Parker's also adept at showing Scrooge's alteration. "I went forth last night on compulsion," he tells the Ghost of Christmas Present, "and I learnt a lesson which is working now." And we saw it; when Scrooge watched his younger selves – as a boy alone in a schoolhouse over Christmas, then as an ambitious young businessman freezing out his one true love – Parker's face slowly, subtly softened, like wax under a candle flame. It was the face of a man awakening to regret, and the finely tuned humanity of it made his Scrooge a figure whose redemption was not merely something we could believe in but something we desired to see.

The State Theater Company version has more the feel of the story's second spirit: genial of face, sparkling of eye, cheery of voice, unconstrained in its demeanor and joyful in its air. From the moment the actors sneak onstage and conspiratorially whisper out to us the start of the story, as if sharing a terrific secret, through that final, inevitable, happy "God bless us every one," the show feels like a party, a holiday revel. It takes its cue from Neil Bartlett's adaptation, which zeros in on the playful spirit of Dickens' language. Rather than parrot the author's narration whole, Bartlett will pull out key words that embellish Dickens' world and have the cast chant them, as "cold, bleak, biting" to describe the weather or "squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching" to describe Scrooge. Here, the old skinflint has the look of a wild hermit: A wild mane of frosty white hair erupts from actor David Stahl's skull and tumbles across his shoulders. He is a figure of bitter cold, roaring at his clerk, his nephew, and the charitable gentlemen who visit him like the North Wind, without an ounce of warmth in him. But Stahl knows just when to thaw him, and director Michelle Polgar gives him the time and space to reveal the slow heating of his long-frozen heart. Polgar also treats us to visions of sight and sound that make this among the most visually sumptuous and affecting versions of this oft-staged story ever seen locally: hundreds of snowflakes of light cascading from the sky as Scrooge revisits his past, a great circle of night sky dotted with stars as he is transported around the world, a giant hulking figure in a midnight black robe with a moon face and gnarled tree-limb arms. Richard Winkler's lighting contributes mightily to these dreamy images, and the singing of traditional carols, as musical directed by Michael McKelvey, adds glories throughout. The generosity of spirit from the actors here and from the production overall will leave you cheering, "God bless them, God bless them every one."