All these years after the final curtain came down on eight years of A Christmas Carol, people still come up to me and bring up old Scrooge. It became the staple holiday offering. But the first season, I remember a good deal of trepidation. The production, while true to the tale in many regards, was far from the ordinary extravaganza most people had come to expect. I was a little concerned that we might be goring a sacred cow or ox or something, to confuse if not mix a my metaphor. Happily, that first audience bought into all this and we had a tradition on our hands. And the reviews I've found in the shoe boxes tell the story.

The frontispiece of Chloe Oldenburg's History of the Play House

One of Charlie Berliner's fabulous Christmas cards

For my part, I loved every minute of it. It was a physical marathon. I typically lost fifteen pounds during the run despite eating every Christmas goodie in sight. A nightly 90 minute sprint does wonders for the waistline. Since then, the avoirdupois has crept steadily up year by year.

with Catherine Albers as Christmas Past

And virtually everybody in town had a role in it at one time or another, most of whom are still talking to me.

with Robbie Rhys and Chuck Richie as Present

The constant recasting helped me to keep things fresh and made it the "Shear Madness" of its time. I'm still doing Scrooge!

with the late Allen Leatherman as Christmas Future

Cover art by George Wervey

There is so much material in my files--and so much missing!--about and around this show that it will take too much time to include it all at once. I'll peck away at it as best I can. But if anyone has any good color pictures, send them along, and sooner or later, I'll park them on this memory lane and return them to you unharmed. For now:

Another of many covers, this of Christmas Future

REVIEWS:

1980:

THE CLEVELAND PRESS:

'A Christmas Carol' worthy of praise by Tony Mastroianni, 11/29/80

Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" is on stage at the Play House Drury Theater in a version that is anything but ordinary, a staging that is filled with magic and imagination.

It is an adaptation by Doris Baizley that sets it as a play-within-a-play. It is performed by a group of motley actors, whose colorful and raggedy costumes and masks gradually give way to Dickens' gray and ghostly tale.

There are touches of commedia dell'arte to their entrance as they come prancing, tumbling and cartwheeling down the aisles.

A short-tempered stage manager greets them, berates them and finds fault with them. In spite of his jeers they begin their performance and as the familiar description of Old Marley ("dead as a doornail") is uttered, the house lights go down.

The performers lack an actor to play Scrooge, however, so the stage manager is pressed into service. A few dabs of makeup, a stiffening of his gait as he walks about and the transformation is complete. The most famous miser of all time is among us.

It is a theatrical magic that never falters. The play is performed with a minimum of sets, no props and loads of imagination.

A huge trunk, 12 feet high, opens to become both back drop and set. There is a platform that is a bed when it isn't just a platform. Raised on edge, it turns out to have mirrors on the bottom to add anotyher dimension to the staging.

Actors serve as doors and doorposts, furniture and even the flames in a stove that doesn't exist. The dazzle in this adaptation is due to the work of scenery and costume designer Charles Berliner.

Some of this business could come perilously close to being merely cute in lesser hands. There are no lesser hands at work here, however.

William Rhys' direction is as imaginative as Berliner's design and Baizley's adaptation. To the performance the Play House company brings a sense of ensemble playing that is wonderful and fully satisfying.

While this concept of "A Christmas Carol" is filled with theatrical fantasy rather than dramatic literalness it is amazingly faithful to the original in feeling. Furthermore, there are no drastic liberties in either story, characters or dialogue.

Those of us who have read the Dickens tale dozens of times will have little to quibble with.

The ghosts are particularly ghostly, spirits that hover and frighten and carry the tale forward as good shosts should.

This version of "A Christmas Carol" has what few adaptations have, a consistent point of view that belongs to Scrooge. We never leave his bedroom except when we are with him, never see anything except when we see it through his eyes.

Adding a distinctive touch to the proceedings is some original music as well as arrangement of established tunes by Play House musical consultant David Gooding. The choreographed bits are in the capable hands of Susan Epstein Irwin.

Ther performers--doubling and tripling their roles--are uniformly excellent. But there must be special mention for Wayne S. Turney, stage manager and Scrooge of this show.

The play, as it must, rests on his shoulders throughout. More important, so does the concept--the move from reality to fantasy and back again.

And at the end he gives it a note of wistfulness, a reluctant farewell. It's one of those moments to give you a little shiver along your apine.

This production of "A Christmas Carol" deserves to become a holiday tradition.

1981:

THE PLAIN DEALER: 'A Christmas Carol' sets mood for the holiday season by Michael Ward

By now Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" has survived more yuletime adaptations than the copywright violations poor Dickens himself suffered during his life.

The splendid one by Doris Baizley that opened last night at the Cleveland Play House's Euclid-77th St. is one of which Dickens tormented soul would thoroughly approve.

With hand bells, a carol, clowns, acrobats, original music, audience participation and altogether enough innovative ideas to give this classically vintage chestnut a sparkling new outer shell, this is indeed a holiday event for the family.

It bubbles with originality, good fun and a determination to please that would bring a smile to the face of Jacob Marley himself.

In particular, it has Wayne S. Turney in the main part. He is the personification of Scrooge in both his moods, and his performance has the delightful combination of a few mild chills for the children and a touch of cynicism for the adults.

Turney, as well as playing Scrooge, plays the stage manager of a touring troupe that is about to produce a version of "A Christmas Carol." This is where Baizley and director William Rhys have unleashed their imaginations. It is the idea of a play within a play that gives this old favorite a gleaming fresh coat of paint.

It is so good that it hardly matters that some of the costumes, music and dance, and especially the masks, represent and England of 100 years or so earlier than the one in which Dickens walked.

The set designed by Charles Berliner has all the entertainment emerge from a huge theatrical truck that ooccupies center stage.

The production also breaks with tradition in having the Ghost of Christmas Past played by a woman. The costume department decks Carolyn Reed out something like an eiderdown comforter on a bed for the occasion, and Reed makes the innovation work well.

Allan Byrne combines the joint roles of prop boy and Tiny Tim with charm and believability, as does Gregory M. Del Torto as the sinister Ghost of Christmas Future.

There are many impressive performances in a large cast with all the players taking multiple roles. I particularly liked Dudley Swetland as Fred and the Young Leading Man, and Sharon Bicknell as the ingenue, Belle, the love of young Scrooge's life, and as Mrs. Fred.

The production, a repeat of last year's, is so good it just about gets me in a holiday spirit, and I'm usually the first to say "humbug" to the whole overcommercialized festivity.

THE CLEVELAND PRESS: 'Christmas Carol'--dazzling again by Tony Mastroianni

The Play House production of 'A Christmas Carol,' which had all the earmarks of becoming a holiday tradition last year, has returned.

It was dazzling then, and it's dazzling now. It's as welcome as an old friend, as interesting as a new one.

The adaptation by Doris Baizley has a group of itinerant actors preparing to stage the Dickens classic. The stage is bare except for an oversized cabinet that dwarfs the players. A short-tempered stage manager goes over the list of props with the prop boy. The players arrive. They are dressed in a mixture of colorful rags and occasional finery, costumes that defy a sense of time or place. They have the characteristics of a commedia dell-arte trou[e as they tumble, bounce, pantomime and improvise.

The director assigns parts and introduces the players. The fellow who played Tiny Time is missing, fired by the stage manager. The prop boy volunteers and the role is his.

The acor who once played Scrooge also is gone, departed for a better or at least non-acting job. The stage manager is pressed into service and the transformation begins--a play within a play comes to life, actors assume new identities.

That huge box opens and becomes a curtained backdrop. Players are not only people, they are doors, door-knockers, chairs and tables. A coverlet in a heap rises up and it is a character. Others disappear to be transformed into someone or something else.

"A Christmas Carol" in this version and under the inventive direction of William Rhys (who is also one of the more energetic and athletic performers) is an evening of theatrical magic.

It is that magic that prevents this from being just another adaptation of a familiar tale. The only version that really survives coming back to year after year is the original.

This one has enough of the improvisational about it that it is filled with surprises.

Dickens intended his tale to be a ghost story. It is very much that in this presentation, preserving both the spirit and the spirits of the original.

But there are more than ghosts. There are the Fezziwigs and the wonderful Christmas ball given by Scrooge's first employer. There are the Cratchits, not quite so dominant in this but present enough, and Belle, the only love of Scrooge's life who is given a little more emphasis than usual.

Best of all, there is Scrooge's transformation, the change from the mean miser to joyful human being, the miracle that is a climax and a whole lot more. Everything is aimed at that event. Even the lighting plays a part as the theater grows brighter after the deep gloom that accompanies the shrouded Ghost of Christmas Future.

In a company as splendid as this, I hate to single out one performer. This is truly an ensemble group. Together and individually they are outstanding.

But surely there must be special mention for the job done by Wayne Turney as stage manager and Scrooge. Granted, Scrooge is the dominant role. But Turney has grasped the nuances of Scrooge before and after and the nuances of the stage manager in both the opening and closing. Although the lines are sufficient, Turney gives the role something extra--a shriveling of the spirit as the miserly Scrooge and the expression of an inner joy as the reformed Scrooge.

In the more realistic (relatively) role of the stage manager, he is quite simply mean-spirited in the beginning, a quietly reflective human at the end.

Whether considering any of its parts or the event as a whole, "A Christmas Carol" at the Play House Euclid 77th Theatre is a delightful, wonderful, magical evening of entertainment.

1982:

1983:

THE PLAIN DEALER: 'Christmas Carol' is full of magic by Joanna Connors

Charles Dickens wrote "A Christmas Carol" in less than a month in 1843 because he was going broke. According to his granddaughter, Monica Dickens, the writer had spent a lot of money on his trip to America in 1841: his wife, Catherine, had given birth recently to the8ir fifth child, and sales of his latest novel "Barnaby Rudge," were going badly.

Dickens had to produce a quick fix, so he came up with "A Christmas Carol" which, to his surprise, moved him tremendously. As Monica Dickens wrote, "...what had been started as a cold-blooded money maker was finished in a white heat of emotion that left Dickens ready to laugh or weep 'with moist or oystery twinkle' at the mere mention of the word Cratchit."

Now, almost a century and a half later, theaters across the land produce Dickens' classic tale with the same eye to the balance sheet that Dickens had. The story of Ebenezer Scrooge's Christmas Eve transformation from stingy curmudgeon to generous free spirit is a sure moneymaker, a crowd pleaser. But is the end result--the urprising felicity of art born of commerce--the same?

Not always: I've seen some dreadfully ponderous, Edgar Allen Poe-ish renditiopns of the story. But the fourth annual production at the Cleveland Play House which opened Friday, achieves all that Dickens had in mind with "A Christmas Carol." It's a crowd pleaser, that's certain, but director William Rhys has staged it with such exuberance and magic that oystery twinkles are sure to abound in the audience.

Doris Baizley's adaptation, which the Play House has used since 1980, emphasized magic of all kinds--the magic of Christmas, the magic of friends and family, the magic of spirits and ghosts and dreams. Most of all though, it focuses on the magic of theater.

Baizley's version takes place on the ragtag stage of a traveling theatrical troupe just in from Parma, ready now to perform their "Christmas Carol" in Cleveland. As soon as the commedia dell arte players bound onto the stage and unlock the huge trunk, there to reveal Charles Berliner's cunning stage-set, it's clear that this merry little troupe intends to cast a spell.

The designers--Berliner also did the costumes, a sort of flotsam-and-jetsam riot of fabric and color; James Irwin the lighting and James Guy the props==use detail in small, delightful strokes to help the magic along.

The props we see as the players prepare the stage, for instance--a dirty puff of "snow," a frazzled gray cloth of "fog"--become sparkling, starry snowflakes and a silky, floating fabric of fog when the play has begun.

Rhys magnifies the effect with his fluid staging. This seems a different Play House company altogether under his choreograpic direction: confident, phuysically free, graceful. Many of the actors perform in roles they have developed during the four years of staging "A Christmas Carol," so that may make some difference. But Rhys, an actor, clearly has a director's eye: He uses the entire Bolton shouse, with actors running up and down the aisles and playing mostly on the stepped apron of the new stage as close to the audience as possible.

Wayne S. Turney is wonderful as the persnickety stage manager who is forced by circumstance to play Scrooge. In effect, he plays several characters: the stage manager who is sure he can't handle the role; the bitter old Scrooge; the vulnerable young Ebenezer, and finally the irrepressible Scrooge who emerges after his long night of dreams and spirits.

The rest of the company supports his various character transformations beautifully. Rhys has instilled in them a precise sense of timing: These actors don't merely make entrances, they burst onstage; they don't just move props and set peices, they dance with them.

"A Christmas Carol" runs through Jan 1. in the Bolton Theater of the Cleveland Play House.

1984:

THE PLAIN DEALER: 'A Christmas Carol' is a delightful gift from the Play House by Roxanne T. Mueller

As long as the Cleveland Play House keeps putting on "A Christmas Carol" every year, the holiday season will be that much brighter and that much merrier.

This joyous theatrical experience glows with the warmth of a roaring fire and throbs with exuberance and exultant energy. The production, now in its fifth year, opened Friday night in the Drury Theater.

Doris Baizley's adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic tale pares the story to its familiar elements and places them within the context of a play within a play.

Just a cranky stage manager and an apprentice prop boy hold the stage in the opening scene, but within moments, the theater erupts with actors in bright costumes bursting in to the accompaniment of festive music. Director William Rhys establishes a raucous, happy atmosphere that puts anyone fearing an evening of Victorian antiquity completely at ease.

In the best show-must-go-on tradition, the cheery company director ignores the fact that Marley's chains are missing and insists the grumbling stage manager would make a perfect Scrooge, since the usual actor has skipped town.

And so on to the story, sans expensive sets and cosmetically aged props--they're not needed nor even wanted. It's imagination that makes this show so infectious, and the humor with which it's employed.

When a fire is needed, someone dons red plastic gloves, twirls his hands around and affects flames. A crew of six not only puts together Scrooge's bed but becomes his furniture.

Charles Berliner's costume designs are marvels of wit and fantasy. Marley's raggedy costume is half ghostly apparition and half doorknob. And when the Ghost of Christmas Past pops yp, Scrooge rightly exclaims, "You're not a spirit, you're a bedspread!"

The Ghost of Christmas Present is a kind of laurel and Hardy act, with two merry pranksters sharing a giant coverlet who somehow avoid a major collision.

In his quest to keep things lively, Rhys is perfectly willing to let the story come to an occasional standstill. The centerpiece of the Ghost of Christmas Past taking Scrooge to a party is the perfect excuse to break out in dance and music.

Not only is there a crazy Christmas tree on the loose at that point but children from the audience are brought right up to share the fun. Opening night saw one tiny girl deciding she liked the bright lights of the stage and wanting to stay. It's things like this that make the entire production burst with spontaneity and good cheer.

The actors are so keyed they threaten to exhause the audience. Wayne S. Turney is a marvelous Scrooge. He's got his 'Bah, humbugs," down pat but conveys a wonderful child-like joy by play's end when Scrooge is more frisky lamb than old goat.

Morgan Lund is a spirited, never-say-die type as the company director and a properly threatening (but not too threatening since he's chainless) Marley. Dan Westbrook and Robert D. Phillips are terrific as the twinned Ghost of Christmas Present.

There's hardly a thing to fault in this beautiful holiday package. Tradition is what Christmas is all about and the Cleveland Play Hous celebrates it in jubilant style.