Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol (devised and directed by Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace, Ben Kauffman, Julia Miller, and Kyle Vegter) is a charming remix of an old classic, but with added layers for extra warmth this time of year. Imagine the timeless tale of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol with a modern upgrade, boasting a new kind of Scrooge forged by losses of a contemporary sort—a spouse lost to COVID-19 and a life full of regrets and workaholism.
It would be easy to have a poor opinion of the parallel character Trudy’s plight—as we are led to have of Scrooge—if she weren’t so relatable and filled with anger toward blissfully cheerful folk during the holidays. Something has changed in the 180 years since the original story was written—we’ve all become Scrooge.
Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol
Through 12/24: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Wed 12/13 3 and 7:30 PM, Wed 12/20 7:30 PM, Fri 12/22 3 PM, Sun 12/17 6 PM; Writers Theatre, 325 Tudor Ct., Glencoe, 847-242-6000, writerstheatre.org, $35-$90; recommended for ages 6+
Trudy is stuck in an era that won’t allow her to slow down long enough to process her losses. She is expected to move on and keep up. On top of that, she is lovingly coerced into performing her deceased partner’s favorite puppet play over Zoom for his surviving relatives. It has taken a lot of wine and social pressure to snap her into step for the holidays. Consider the sensory overwhelm, the increased social demands to match increased workloads, and family expectations.
Does something feel familiar here? Is it no wonder that both Trudy and Scrooge find some of the cherished rituals to be just hollow excuses for overindulgence rather than genuine opportunities to connect with loved ones? And for those of us dealing with the loss of a loved one around this time of year, the feeling of dread and heaviness can easily cast a darker hue on the forced mirth of the season.
LaKecia Harris embodies this sorrow and anger at the top of Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol, and it rings so true that the gloom is palpable. Add to that the gorgeous staging, chaotic piles of boxes heading to charity, and one endearing puppet theater at the center of the dining room table that is otherwise piled with wine glasses and the debris of packing. Smoky Victorian lighting (designed by Trey Brazeal) vies for space with the cheerful string of Christmas lights on the tiny puppet theater. Sometimes spooky and sometimes jolly, the set seamlessly morphs from a household in transition into a puppet theater in old London.
Live music is provided by a talented team who become partly visible on and off behind a curtain as the music rises and falls to the action: Teiana Davis (lead vocals, keys, piano), Lucy Little (violin, vocals), and cocreator Vegter (cello, keys, bass). Puppeteers Lizi Breit, cocreator Miller, and Jeffrey Paschal arrange magical segues between scenes, operating paper puppets in groundbreaking ways to create mind-bogglingly complicated visuals.
As the puppet show unfolds and a real storm brews outside her home, Trudy slowly comes undone and opens up as the ghosts of Christmases past, present, and future run her through the routine, exploring memories, possibilities, and projections. Her transformation is ultimately just as unimaginable and rewarding as that of Ebenezer Scrooge’s, the puppet she reluctantly operates for Joe’s Zoom family audience, not even knowing whether the Internet connection has held. She suddenly understands she needs them: a real, live connection to her past, present, and future.
Originally performed as a play on Zoom at the height of the lockdown in December 2020, then debuting in its physical form last November at Writers Theatre, the Jeff Award-winning cast has returned to bend the beloved Victorian novella to the times, drifting in and out of direct wording from the book and modern-day cursing. Harris’s comedic timing is as perfect as her ability to pull at our heartstrings. From hilariously scolding her relatives for their jolly natures to railing against Joe for his lack of financial savvy, we accept her struggle. We root for her, as with each remembered kindness her heart grows a little lighter and she opens up more to her grief around her beloved Joe.
Manual Cinema considers itself a performance collective, design studio, and a film/video production company. Since their origin in 2010, they have lived up to that diverse mission, creating dozens of productions and shows for film, music, and theater, all of which combine their signature style of original scores, live action, and puppetry. Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol is the perfect setting to showcase their flexibility, storytelling, and creativity. It’s spine-tingling. It’s moving. It’s just what you need to loosen all that pent-up ire and open your heart a bit this holiday season.