HAGERSTOWN – Tis’ the season for bah humbugging, and Authentic Community Theatre is giving you two interesting options for Scroogey contemplation: their traditional annual “A Christmas Carol,” and their alternative spin, “A Christmas Carol Drunk After Dark” (see review by Kelly Dowling).
In this review, we shall dive into the traditional Dickensian take on this long-cherished classic. Let’s first discuss the distribution of hats and those wearing the two tallest stacks.
ACT President and Operations Manager Jennifer Enfield is excited to be making her directorial debut, also credited with the script adaptation, co-show designer, and costumer. Showing her broad range of creative passions and committed work ethic, she possesses a hat tally of six.
ACT Artistic Director Scott Ruble runs the character gamut from a morose Marley, to a jubilant Fezziwig, to a menacing Present, demonstrating that his acting chops spread wide. Ruble is also the show’s co-designer with Enfield, exhibiting design, performance and administration proficiency in his portfolio of theatrical offerings, bringing his hat tally to five.
Entering the ACT studio space, you pass through a reception bar and lobby with an art deco vibe – a luxury for a small theater, and from the street, one that can easily be mistaken for a bar alone.
The studio space accommodates seating for under 70, and for this production, the performance space is situated between two raked seating areas, making every moment on stage an intimate one.
The stage is set at ACT Black Box Studio
The small, raised stage is framed by a golden arc, painted with roman numerals – the edge of a clockface, with time encompassing the whole tale in the span of a day.
The set design has a nice duality, also feeling reminiscent of a snow globe, further added to by London fog and the minimalist set design of Enfield and Ruble, just enough to imply a scene, before being shaken into the next.
The year is 1843. The place is Victorian London. Gentle viewer, please entertain some good-natured suspension of disbelief, as costumes, set elements and props may bleed from other eras, and accents may vary. Any lover of community theater knows the limitations of store houses and ha’penny budgets and the welcoming blend of all levels of talent.
The story and the joy of creatively building as a community are the focus. This tale is adequately told in minimalist fashion, with a fully committed cast and the occasional breaking of the fourth wall.
The townspeople are convincing in their business, inviting another era to wonder of their inner lives. They stroll through the border aisles, sometimes gazing directly at the audience, as if seeing them on the streets of The Big Smoke, there in the foggy haze and industrial workhouse pollution.
Sam DeJesus plays a greying Scrooge, perched at his counting house desk in miserly misery, with his younger clerk, Bob Cratchit, played by Taylor Martin. Martin also plays Dick, Topper, and Businessman (bringing his hat tally to four), showing a nice range and care of character choices to differentiate one from the other.
Michael Reifel enters as Fred, Scrooge’s cheerful nephew, come to invite him to dine the next evening. Reifel will also portray Young Scrooge and Businessman (hat tally: three).
Taylor Martin plays Cratchit to Sam DeJesus’ Scrooge
The Scroogey old buzzard brushes away Fred’s “Merry Christmas” greeting with one of the show’s most iconic lines,
“Bah! Humbug!”
No time is wasted to set up the theme, as Scrooge quips, “What right have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.” Fred responds, “What right have you to be dismal? You’re rich enough.”
When another visitor requests a donation to make provisions for the poor, Scrooge scowls, “Are there no prisons, no workhouses? He refuses contribution, defending his logic, “I support the places I have mentioned. Those who are badly off must go there.” When the respondents declare, “many would rather die!” Scrooge retorts, “If they would rather die, they had better do it and decrease the surplus population.”
Interestingly, the concept of a “surplus population” in need of reduction has re-entered the contemporary zeitgeist. This, too, was a real, though controversial, idea in 1843.
With rapid urbanization and poverty on the rise, there were theories, such as those of English economist, cleric and scholar, Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), that feared outgrowing food supplies. Like Scrooge, the Malthusian view saw overpopulation and poverty as a natural outcome, while the rest of Dickens’ characters highlighted his view that economic injustice calls for social reform, rather than letting people perish.
DeJesus as Scrooge carries the show with a tally of one very tall hat, with the mother lode of lines tucked in it. He wears it well.
Imaginative light design presents aggressive kaleidoscopic gobos in dancing patterns, as the director incorporates ghostly whispers to announce the arrival of Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s deceased business partner.
The haunting murmurings give way to Ruble’s shrieks and booming delivery, as Marley thrusts his fate upon Scrooge, his whole being shackled with regret by the links of his poor deeds.
“But you were always a good man of business,” Scrooge reasons. “Business!” cries the ghost, “Mankind was my business.”
Marley is the harbinger of what is to come: Scrooge will be haunted by Three Spirits.
Marissa Dean as the Ghost of Christmas Past visits Sam DeJesus as Scrooge
With a swirling mist and the tolling of midnight, Scrooge is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past, played by Marissa Dean (also Belle, Phoebe and Mrs. Cratchit … hat tally: four). Her cloak sparkles like snow, edged with icy tinsel. Dean’s delivery is firm and decisive and gives Scrooge no choice but to yield to Past’s magic.
Past transports Scrooge to his younger years, where Aaron Wolfensberger plays Boy Scrooge as a school lad. Wolfensberger will also play Tiny Tim, giving him a two-hat tally, but the smallest will be the most important, delivering the final thematic complement, that may very well have an eternal life.
Scrooge’s young sister, Fan, played with gentle excitement by Evie McNeal, enters the scene to reclaim her brother from boarding school. He is surprised with the plan to be returned home for Christmas. McNeal will also play Lucy, Martha and Beggar, with a hat tally that poses the challenge of devising four distinctively different characters, which she glides through undauntingly.
A peek into Scrooge’s life as a young apprentice, introduces Fezziwig (as Ruble switches hats), a jolly man, well-matched by Mrs. Fezziwig, played by Gabrielle Meiron, bubbling with joy and resplendent in a red gown. Meiron will also play Grocer, Charwoman and Beggar, with a hat tally of four.
DeJesus does well, evolving from a miserly mindset, to nostalgia for his school days, to the giddy excitement of revisiting his era of young manhood – a time when he possessed some modicum of social grace and allowed himself to love the world and the people and things in it.
DeJesus allows a softening as Scrooge waxes prolific of Fezziwig’s virtues. Past remarks, “A small matter to make these folks so happy,” to which Scrooge presses, “It isn’t that, Spirit. He has the power to render us so happy or unhappy; to make our service a pleasure or a toil. The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”
Dean now artfully becomes Belle, Scrooge’s young betrothed, who releases him from their promise because she feels displaced by the golden idol of wealth.
With a cackle that seems so ripped from a Renaissance Faire, that we expect the arrival of a brute and his entourage of bawdy wenches, Ruble announces himself as the Ghost of Christmas Present, adorned in beautifully designed layers of sequins and velvet, tassels and tapestry, with locks of red flowing from his wreathed head, and his cheeks circled in rosy mirth.
With a touch of his robe, Past transports Scrooge through the merry streets on Christmas morning. Past is magically able to freeze time, generously depositing gold coins with passersby, each gesture cringeworthy to Scrooge.
Ruble makes a generous deposit as Ghost of Christmas Present, Gabrielle Meiron plays Grocer, & Evie McNeal plays eldest Cratchit daughter, Martha
Arriving at the modest Cratchit home, Scrooge is privy to the abounding joy, unhindered by life’s meager portions, down to the crippled youngest, Tiny Tim, (Wolfensberger).
When Father Cratchit (Martin) raises a toast to “Mr. Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast!” Mrs. Cratchit (Dean) nearly tells him where she’d like to shove the Christmas pudding, but gains her composure for the sake of family and the spirit of the day.
Another stop allows Scrooge to peer into the dinner party of his nephew Fred, where Ruble now dons the hat of host and playfully leads his guests in games. The very party for which Scrooge dismissed his invitation is now a place of cheer and laughter at his expense.
Upon his departure, Present reveals the children of man: the girl, “Want,” and the boy, “Ignorance.” Present declares, “for written upon his [Ignorance’s] brow, is the doom of the world,” his resonant truth reaching through the ages.
The spirit leaves with echoes of “Are there no prisons, no workhouses?”
Evocative production design makes effective use of snaking fog, eerie lighting and the underscore of discordant carols, to herald the coming and going of the final spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
The haze lingers on a death scene observed by two Businessmen, played by Reifel and Martin, who banter crass dark humor over the deceased.
Scrooge asks the spirit, “Is there no one in this city who feels something for that man?” yet unable to discern with clarity who has passed.
The state of things worsen as Scrooge is shown two Beggars, here Meiron and McNeal shift into the depraved world, bragging of their looted score, including the very shirt taken off the dead man’s back.
A return to the Cratchit house reveals a thoughtful performance by Dean as Mrs. Cratchit, somberly engaged in needlepoint, in the company of her children, as she fights to maintain composure while awaiting her husband’s return from the grave of their son, Tiny Tim.
The final grim impression made by Ruble’s imposing Present is of Scrooge’s headstone, paraded onstage, surrounded by carols sung in minor.
Scrooge left to contemplate the man he has been
DeJesus exemplifies redemption when Scrooge awakens to discover Christmas day at hand. He is beside himself, “light as a feather, happy as an angel, merry as a schoolboy.” DeJesus deftly navigates the transition to a delirious joy-filled idiot, struggling to choke out “Merry Christmas!”
Addi Mullendore plays a determined and ambitious Turkey Girl, tasked by Scrooge to buy the biggest turkey in the shop to be delivered to the Cratchit family. The lovely Miss Mullendore also plays Jane and Lizzie, bringing her hat tally to three.
The cast of ACT’s “A Christmas Carol”
When Scrooge bursts in on the Cratchits’ Christmas Day festivities, DeJesus plays a well-turned trick, the last crafty triumphant turn of his full reversal of Scrooge. Scrooge vows to help Tiny Tim, to whom he wishes to become like a second father.
In resolve, we are left with Master Wolfensberger as Tiny Tim, wearing his second hat of the show to deliver the last of the most iconic lines,
“God bless us, every one!”
All hats off to the cast and crew for crafting this Christmas classic once again.
The cast of “A Christmas Carol”
Cheers to Savannah Admire, stage manager, for keeping all those hats in proper order.
Bravo to Ray McCormick, for wearing the construction hat and building evocative structures that simply work.
Raise your glass during intermission with creatively themed cocktails being sold at the bar or enjoy a petit nosh charcuterie box.
I spent intermission chatting with Director of Creative Marketing Georgia Martin, who is serving her second term on the board, and was grateful to recently share the stage with her daughter, Jillian, in “Descendants,” as her son joined the production’s tech department.
“The reason I’m a part of ACT is because of what they’ve done for my children,” Martin said, “They’ve given my children a safe space to be themselves and be able to express themselves artistically.”
Third term board member, ACT Assistant Treasurer & Director of Donor Relations Carlee McNeal said of her daughter Evie, who plays four roles in the show, “she has always been outgoing – ACT has just built on that.”
Evie took class and did Jr. shows before landing on the mainstage. “The ACT process is going to build a good foundation for other real-world skills,” McNeal said, explaining that her son, Finn, went from being “a timid little thing,” to singing acapella, last appearing in ACT’s “Descendants.”
ACT Secretary Gerry McCarney, now serving his sixth term with the board, noted that last year was the second year they did the alternative production of “Christmas Carol Drunk After Dark,” which was written by Taylor Martin, who plays Cratchit in this traditional production.
Martin’s script won second place in ACT’s One-Act Festival and was then expanded to a full show. Gerry played Scrooge in the premiere.
“A Christmas Carol,” was first published in 1843, written by Charles Dickens over a six-week span, emerging from the brutal realities of the “Hungry Forties.”
Dickens drew experience from his own childhood poverty and reflections on child labor, feeling a need to address social injustice. The themes of redemption and social reform have sadly never gone out of need or fashion, though British child labor laws would be instituted in the early 19th century, beginning with the Factory Act of 1833. Laws would begin to emerge by state in the U.S. in 1836, but would not achieve national organization until 1938, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act.
The fact that inequality and labor laws have not been globally reformed in 2025, should foretell this classic’s enduring place in history for many Christmases to come. Various productions have proven their worth to grace Broadway and West End stages.
ACT’s “A Christmas Carol” opened on Dec. 5 and runs through Dec. 23, with 7 p.m. shows remaining on Saturdays, 1 p.m. matinees on Sundays, and 7 p.m. shows on Monday Dec. 22, and Tuesday, Dec. 23, at ACT Black Box Studio, 43 S. Potomac St., Hagerstown.
Tickets may be purchased at www.actforall.org or at the door. General tickets are $27.70 (including $2.70 in fees). Dinner & Show tickets are $58.90 (incl. $3.90 in fees), which include a pre-show dinner at Veva’s on Potomac across the street, which boasts locally sourced beef and handcrafted pastas.
The run time is approximately 90 minutes.
Choose your flavor of Scrooginess! You can also check out ACT’s alternative holiday offering, “A Christmas Carol Drunk After Dark,” running Dec. 12-20. For more information, visit www.actforall.org.
ACT has a mission to educate and enrich the community through classes and theatre performances. In addition to stage productions and education, they offer summer camps that culminate in produced shows. They sometimes have both senior mainstage and junior productions, producing two casts for the same show with two different runs that allow junior members to shadow senior performers as they craft their roles. Please visit www.actforall.org for more information about the theater’s upcoming events and consider donating to the arts in this season of giving.
Photo credit: Savannah Admire: To Love and Admire Photography
