Ebenezer Scrooge makes his living as a loan shark in one of the capital's most disadvantaged neighborhoods. Bob Cratchit is an out-of-work chef. It's his wife, Penny, who puts in the long, thankless hours in Scrooge's freezing offices. Their son T.T. (for Tiny Tim) has been confined to a wheelchair ever since a random bullet struck him in the spine while he was playing in the street.
"A Christmas Carol" may be the traditional holiday offering at countless resident theaters across the nation, but Arena Stage, joining forces with the Cornerstone Theater Company, is giving Charles Dickens's 150-year-old tale a decidedly non-traditional spin.The co-production, which runs through Jan. 2, is called "A Community Carol" and does more than just celebrate a "wonderful togetherness." It shows the way.
The diverse cast unites longtime members of both companies, two deaf elementary-school children who speak their parts in sign language, and 18 other nonprofessional performers recruited primarily in Anacostia, a particularly troubled area on the eastern edge of the city, where this adaptation is set.
Artistically, the results are wildly uneven. But the amateur actors have clearly profited from the opportunity to work alongside professionals. In the evening's best moments, you tend to forget which is which. More important: By the end, this melting pot of a production generates some authentic feelings of good will.
The script - a collaborative effort by Alison Carey, Edward P. Jones, Laurence Maslon and Bill Rauch - follows Dickens' general outline but is written in street vernacular and laced with local and pop culture references.
The scenery sits on a bleak patch of urban pavement. (Marley emerges from a manhole.) The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come eventually leads Scrooge to the morgue, where he learns from the tag on the toe of a corpse what his fate will be if he doesn't mend his parsimonious ways. Among the dozens of characters, the wasted and the homeless are well represented.
But so are the city's subway employees, construction workers, firemen, police, joggers, Marine guards, churchgoers and a football team known as the Washington Potato-skins.
"A Community Carol" is mindful to temper the grim realities of the ghetto with broad fun, songs and nostalgic memories of Christmases past.