For nearly 30 years, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company has produced classic Shakespeare plays every summer, free to the public, at the Parkman Bandstand on the Boston Common. Now the company is aiming to create a new yearly city tradition, this one coming during the holiday season, with a fresh production of Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol,” starring Boston theater luminary Will Lyman as the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge.
With a script adapted by Steve Wargo from Dickens’s original 1843 novella and featuring familiar Christmas carols, the production runs at Emerson Cutler Majestic Theatre Dec. 8-22. CSC hopes their new version will join the ranks of beloved local holiday institutions like Boston Ballet’s “The Nutcracker,” Langston Hughes’s “Black Nativity,” and the Handel and Haydn Society’s “Messiah.”
Different adaptations have been performed by Boston-area theater companies for decades. (North Shore Music Theatre’s version, starring David Coffee, is now in its 35th year.) But CSC is aiming to create a new yearly ritual that sits firmly within Boston’s bustling Theatre District.
Steven Maler, CSC’s founding artistic director, said that while Shakespeare on the Common is the company’s centerpiece, they also hope “to control our own destiny a bit more by having another big tentpole production that really shows off who we are and our values, in a different part of the calendar.”
While some arts organization have had to scale back their programming and ambitions with the contraction of live theater audiences since the pandemic, Maler said CSC is trying to “avoid that by building a financial tool with this holiday show that will ultimately spin off surpluses to subsidize some of the work that we give away every year,” he said. “In the same way that a robust ‘Nutcracker’ for the Boston Ballet allows them to be more adventurous and daring in certain parts of their season, we hope that a big production ‘A Christmas Carol’ will help subsidize this annual gift that we do on the Boston Common every year.”
Woven throughout the adaptation are more than 20 different Christmas carols, many popular in Victorian-era England, with lush arrangements by Dianne Adams MacDowell. Some of the songs include “Christmas Is Coming,” “Here We Come A-Wassailing,” “Carol of the Bells,” “Silent Night” and “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.” “[Wargo and Adams] built the narrative with the music in mind and vice versa,” Maler said. “It really uses those musical moments to advance the narrative, the way a traditional musical or an opera would.”
With a cast of nearly 20, plus several children, Maler said they’re trying to create a “celebratory” production that leans into the story’s pomp and pageantry. “It’s going to have this incredibly robust, immensely theatrical feel to it, just like what we do with Shakespeare on the Common, where we always embrace the battles, the fights, the song, and the dance. You want something that’s vibrant and full of life, full of movement and full of joy.”
Former Boston Ballet principal dancer John Lam is choreographing the show’s movement and song-and-dance scenes, including the Christmas party at Fezziwig’s house. With the scenic design, Maler worked with Scott Bradley to create visual storytelling that, he said, “mirrors Scrooge’s journey from darkness, loneliness, and self isolation to one of vibrancy, celebration, and sense of community.”
When the show begins, the Majestic stage will be filled with oversize crates of varying sizes. “As the play unfolds, those crates open up, and like an advent calendar, they reveal the set,” Maler said.
At the center of the production is Lyman as iconic penny-pincher Scrooge. He’s visited on Christmas Eve by the ghost of his deceased business partner Jacob Marley. Entwined in heavy chains, Marley warns the bitter Scrooge about his greed and selfishness and tells him he has a chance to avoid Marley’s cursed fate if he can change his ways. Scrooge is then visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, confronted with the truth about himself and his life and given a harrowing glimpse at his fate if he continues the same path.
“He literally comes face to face with his own lifetime full of neglect and wrong-headedness and carelessness,” Lyman said. “And I think the audience gets carried into that just through the sheer spectacle of seeing ghosts and being taken to different points in somebody’s life. It’s a wonderful device.”
Unlike a tragedy where the flaws consume the hero, Scrooge’s tale is one of redemption. “In this case, the flaws are recognized and overcome,” Lyman said. “No matter who we are, we all wish for redemption of some sort because we all make mistakes, and we all know it.”
In trying to find his way into the character, Lyman is mulling over the reasons why Scrooge is spiteful, tight-fisted, and angry at the world. He points out that the character grew up isolated in a harsh, unforgiving boarding school and felt rejected by his family. As a young man, the love of his life spurned him because of his obsession with money.
“I think a lot of where he is right now is a safeguarding of himself against the idea that he needs anybody. Maybe there’s a reaction that says, ‘Well, hell, bah humbug. I’m not afraid of being alone.’ It’s the thing that terrifies him, but the only thing that he has to fight it is by denying it.”
The story feels as resonant as ever in a time of “division and lack of care and concern for our fellow human being,” Maler said, and Scrooge remains a compelling character because he’s recognizable.
“We’ve all seen people who’ve had tragedy, crises, or failures along their journey, and rather than reexamining and opening themselves up, they actually shut down and sear their heart to protect them from being hurt again,” Maler said. “But what’s so powerful about the play is that we see this character’s incredible transformation. He realizes his failure and embraces change and a new vision of himself and an engagement with the world.”
CHARLES DICKENS’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL
Presented by Commonwealth Shakespeare Company. At Emerson Cutler Majestic Theatre, Dec. 8-22. Tickets from $23.75, 617-824-8400, emersontheatres.org