Open your heart this holiday season for Allegan’s own production of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” Featuring a merry cast of veteran actors, and promising fresh talents, Plum Pudding Productions under the direction of Chris West returns to the Griswold Auditorium Friday, December 4th, Saturday, December 5th (7 PM), and Sunday, December 6th (6 PM). All tickets we be sold at the door on the night of the performance, $5/adult, $10/family, $2/student.
Perhaps the greatest tale of hope and redemption in the English language, Ian West as the haunting and stage-commanding ghost Marley will guide you, your family and friends through the time-traveling, soul-altering redemption of Christmas’s most famous hum bug: Ebenezer Scrooge.
“Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold,” a very transporting Sam West as Scrooge scolds the unsympathetic English night, a night that—unbeknownst to him–is about to become much less accommodating than the bitter tempest blowing within and about Scrooge’s tiny heart. No one on earth deserves less than Ebenezer Scrooge. For this malcontent sourpuss would pack the homeless out of sight and cage them in the prisons or workhouses of Dicken’s England, a sentence likely to end in a disease-riddled death. He detests children and all fashion of merriment. Sam West as Scrooge spits out the word “Christmas” as if venom, searches for ever new ways to express his shocking selfishness, batters and verbally bludgeons both his loyal clerk Cratchit (long-time Griswold veteran Dan Bessey as Cratchit makes you just want to hug him) and his loving, solicitous nephew (played by Chris Hodge)
Who would doubt that Ebenezer Scrooge has been irrevocably damned?
Well, not that he deserves it, but Scrooge has a kinky, kooky, demented guardian angel in the form of a ghost: his equally repugnant ex-partner Jacob Marley. It seems skinflint Marley has been abroad seven years in the limbo landscape of the not-completely-dead, and yet has somehow been given a shot at peace, provided he can convert the unconvertable crosspatch, Ebenezer Scrooge. Does he do it? Well, come and find out.
One of the great pleasures of this production begins with watching the two West brothers inveigle the best of each other’s impressive talent on stage as they push and pull for more from each other. A memorable delight. But the depth of the Director’s full cast of characters is equally impressive.
Don’t miss it. Bring your friends, your family, your heart, and leave the hum bugs at the door, for this Allegan Area Art’s Council sponsored “A Christmas Carol” will prove to be the first shimmering light of your holiday season.
(In the spirit of the holiday season, all proceeds from this performance will be given to local charities.)