The holiday season began early—that’s anytime before Thanksgiving—this year at the Great American Melodrama, which continued an annual holiday season tradition with its three-part production beginning with Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The charming little theater’s halls are decked with holly boughs and other friendly festoonery to suit the season, but most welcoming are the Melodrama’s cast and house team.
All adorned in the garb of Victorian England’s heyday—that’s during Dickens’ lifetime—the familiar faces of returning cast members peek joyfully from under top hats, fisherman caps, and scarves. Alongside, helping with seating and cleanup, are the theater’s youth actors, who collectively make up the children of the Cratchit family. Alternating actors, including several pairs of real-life siblings, play Martha Cratchit, Peter Cratchit, Belinda Cratchit, and “Tiny” Tim Cratchit. Musical director Kevin Lawson warms the hall with wholesome carols and Christmas hymns, setting the mood for the evening of live theater.
The holiday extravaganza includes three, one-act plays beginning with A Christmas Carol, then continuing after first intermission with a delightfully hilarious operetta Hansel and Gretel, and closing out the evening with the Holiday Vaudeville Review.
A Christmas Carol is the perfect way to start the evening, as the iconic morality play is dramatic and heartwarming, and the Melodrama seals the story with a bow on top in just an hour. Longtime contributor to the Melodrama and PCPA Billy Breed returns to the Melodrama stage to reprise the role he has performed there in so many years past. Breed’s Ebenezer Scrooge radiates a fiery anger that scalds all of whom he comes in contact on the street or at his business. Scrooge’s one employee, Bob Cratchit (Jeff Salsbury), suffers his wrath most directly, but so do some charity workers looking for donations, and even his own flesh and blood, his nephew Fred (Tobby Tropper).
With Scrooge established as the hateful old miser hell-bent against anything jolly, the Great American Melodrama turns up the magic with the appearance of Jacob Marley (Mike Fiore), the chained apparition of Scrooge’s deceased business partner. Marley portends the appearance of three spirits: the Ghost of Christmas Past (Jackie Hildebrand), the Ghost of Christmas Present (Alex Sheets), and the Ghost of Christmas Future (Toby Tropper).
Each spirit takes Scrooge on a whirlwind adventure through time, with his past revealing the hardening of his heart, the present showing those who care and those who care not for him, and a future spelling out ultimate doom for more than just the old miser. Every player is totally on mark, which brings the emotional conclusion to the story home, often bringing audiences to lump-throated tears.
The hilarious and not-so-holiday-themed second act is the operetta Hansel and Gretel, which includes a mash-up of opera, classical themes, and some American Broadway to tell a hilarious spoof of the story, as well as many other fairy tales that get caught in the crossfire.
Hansel (Mike Fiore) and Gretel (Mia Mekjian) try to outsmart their parents Jenny (Leah Kolb) and Craig (Jeff Salsbury)—two gym-owning health nuts—by sneaking fatty foods behind their muscular, well-toned backs. Little Red (Jackie Hildebrand) blows the kids’ cover, revealing their junk food habits to Jenny and Craig, who punish the rebellious youth, sending them on a hike with Little Red. While out in the woods, the kids are attracted to a gingerbread house bedecked with every candy wrapper and fast food emblem imaginable. In the house lives a possibly deceitful woman named Sara Lee (Meggie Siegrist). All the while, the hungry and howling B.B. Wolf (Alex Sheets) is hot on the kids’ scent, ready to devour anyone he finds.
Each member of the ensemble lends a powerful voice and character to the delightful little story, and the same goes for the Holiday Vaudeville Review, which closes the evening like a warm cup of cocoa, marshmallows and all. The Melodrama cast always displays their multi-talented abilities in the vaudevilles with acting and through song and dance with fantastically familiar holiday tunes. The whole show reminds all that the Great American Melodrama is a special place to be, no matter what time of year.
Arts Editor Joe Payne feels the magic of the holiday season. Contact him at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Dec 3-10, 2015.