Brooklyn’s №11 Productions’ reimagines Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

To most people, A Christmas Carol has been lost as an emotionally affecting story. Over the years, worn down like a stone in a river, we’ve reduced it to a series of easily dismissed, maudlin tableaus and laugh lines. It’s become a work of such derision that I have never personally experienced any sense of meaning from the story. What do most people remember from “A Christmas Carol”? Scrooge trying to convince himself ghosts can be summoned by indigestion and Tiny Tim simpering to the audience or camera, mugging for cheap sympathy.

So I entered №11 Productions’ (a non-profit in its 10th year) annual staging with only moderate expectations, less than fond of the source material. They managed, however, using humor, heart, and a small yet immensely satisfying cocktail hour, to return A Christmas Carol to a new shine, delighting its audience.

Bit of a Party, №11’s annual production of A Christmas Carol, combines a live production of the story with a full scale Christmas party. Guests mingle, snacking and drinking, until the show breaks out around them, not just on stage but throughout the entire room. We dodged and weaved around actors, creating aisles for the Ghost of Christmas Past (an enormous puppet and highlight of the show) to lurk through, and hopping in for festive line dancing with the cast during Fezziwig’s Christmas party, creating a sort of meta-theater— a party within a show within a party. Live music and dance, some genuinely spooky work on the ghosts, and a few surprises like a balloon drop kept the audience on their toes, not entirely sure in which direction the tone or action would veer.

Walking in from the bitter cold on a quiet, residential street in Brooklyn, I was immediately offered three things: a vest, a scrap of script, and a glass of Christmas Punch.

“You’re going to make an amazing Turkey Boy!”

Along with a few other attendees (playing among others, Scrooge’s strict Headmaster and Tiny Tim), we were given a few brief moments of direction. Personally, I was advised to use the thickest, hammiest cockney accent I could muster. I was then sent off to enjoy the party, cake and cookies, and as much punch as I cared to enjoy.

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Drawing the audience into the world of the show managed to freshen up some of the source text’s more derided elements. Volunteers, cast as the show’s minor characters, were a breath of fresh air. Unrehearsed and cast for maximum laughs, such as choosing a towering, falsetto-ed Tiny Tim, they served as a knowing wink: “It’s okay to laugh. We know it’s a little hackneyed. We know it’s silly.”

But with that permission to laugh, something magic happened—the laugh lines were put out of the way, and the emotional heart of the story shone through.

Thrown off balance by actors emerging from every corner, the ghost story angle of Carol worked shockingly well, the ghost of Jacob Marley, emerging from behind the audience and lunging forward for Scrooge, was delightfully, viscerally uncomfortable. The Ghost of Christmas Past in particular shone with a hilarious beatific condescension. Physically, having to run around the room, stalking the actors put the audience in Scrooge’s vantage point: detached, sad voyeurism growing into a desperation to participate and influence. Invited to play roles, though, that desperation was allowed to bloom into a feeling of catharsis.

Admittedly, the party was a little bit awkward towards the beginning — no one that willing to break the circles they came in with. But by the time the actors invited us on stage for the finale, a Christmas toast, there was a kinship. We’d been on a journey together.

Bit of a Party is №11’s annual Christmas tradition, a shining example of their mission to create and adapt existing works to let the audience play along. Now it’s going to be a Christmas tradition for me, too. Consider my heart to have grown three sizes (or something).

Bit of a Party has concluded. Follow future shows from №11 Productions on their web site.

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