Aah! Scrooge Must Die!

by Angela Berliner

The Actors' Gang - December 11, 2008

Live Review by Adam McKibbin

Photograph of Scott Harris (as Scrooge) and Elora Dannon (as Tiny Tim) by Amber Koehler

An action movie is only as good as its villain – why should a holiday be any different?  Christmas offers both The Grinch and Scrooge as cautionary tales of what can become of you if you don’t let the Christmas spirit into your heart.  But has Scrooge lost some of his luster over the years?  In Aah! Scrooge Must Die!, writer/director Angela Berliner pumps the scourge back into Scrooge – making him not just the grumpy old tightwad of caricature but a vicious hurricane of self-absorption, prejudice and deviance.

Scrooge is the star of his own show – and he’s certainly the star of this show.  On stage for the entirety of the play (granted, it’s a breezy runtime), Scott Harris is deliciously unlikeable.  There aren’t that many belly laughs, but he’s fun to watch throughout.  His Scrooge is bitter, blustering and even murderous.  He cracks racist jokes and mocks poor sweet Tiny Tim (Elora Dannon) in a manner that is most politically incorrect.  Despite the modern recasting, the creators don’t grind any axes by making Scrooge out to be ideologically identifiable; his positions on charity and the welfare state are decidedly arch-conservative, but his atheism – which is mentioned repeatedly albeit awkwardly – wouldn’t win him much favor at the RNC.

We get the origin story – and see how Scrooge was mistreated by parents and shaped by tragedy – but there’s no attempt to let him off the hook.  Berliner has been quick to point out that while the ending of Aah! Scrooge Must Die! reflects the Christmas Carol climax, she is perhaps more cynical about Scrooge’s transformation than Dickens.  They say you can’t take it with you when you’re gone – and that’s almost certainly the case for atheists.  Death is literally knocking on Scrooge’s door and he, above all else, values his wealth and the vindication it represents.  He must stay alive, even if it means feeding the cursed Cratchits.

In a show of relentless excess, Chris Schultz provides a necessary dose of humanity and realism as the downtrodden and much-maligned Bob Cratchit, Scrooge’s underpaid minion.  Cratchit endures – even as his children turn to prostitution and bootlegging – and Schultz gives him a quiet dignity that is very much at odds with the hedonism and hyper-theatrics presented by the other characters.  Other standouts in the cast include Justin Zsebe as Marley, who is literally cast to the wolves, only to return in a darkly comic haunting.  His all-too-brief scenes with Scrooge feel like clashes of the titans; Scrooge’s interactions with the other ghosts – particularly the Portly Gentleman ghosts – feel flat by comparison.

From a technical standpoint, the show shines; costume designer Kathryn Poppen and scenic and lighting designer Francois-Pierre Couture make especially effective choices in bringing the grim world to life.  The choices in the script aren’t so consistently sound, as Berliner sometimes serves cheap jokes and sight gags over storylines (for instance, Marley and Scrooge apparently work with their pants around their ankles; if there is an explanation for this odd behavior, it was missed).  The play’s weaknesses tend to be exposed in its gimmicky big group numbers – simulated orgies and stilted song-and-dance numbers.

Despite its faults, Aah! Scrooge Must Die! is an easy and certainly unique way to spend an hour or so, thanks mainly to the strong lead performances.  The extent to which one enjoys joining The Actors’ Gang is taking the piss out of Dickens may be directly related to how much “regular Christmas” one is forced to endure (mall Santas or department store clerks may laugh especially hard).  The play probably isn’t as envelope-pushing as its creators fancy it to be, despite gung-ho jokes about subjects that may shock your parents but not your friends (one of Scrooge’s better tangents pulls off the hat trick, including anal sex, bestiality and rape).  A renegade theatre company looking to shock should have been able to find a little more voltage.  On the other hand, on this particular evening, a woman near the front literally gasped repeatedly and shrieked with scandalized pleasure at all the salty lines.  Someone get this woman a copy of The Aristocrats for Christmas!