Putting a Rap on Scrooge

Ebenezer Scrooge may seem the embodiment of Victorian England, that era of top hats and class warfare, but his journey of self-discovery could be just as meaningful had he been American. Or black. Or a man of the late 20th century, a period of more casual clothing but equal bitterness between haves and have- nots. For that matter, there’s nothing in the essence of Dickens’ story to preclude glimpses of fast-food workers and airline pilots, or riffs of rap and gospel music, and it’s reasonable enough to have an urban American Tiny Tim (T.T. to his kin) be a victim of a random shooting instead of a mysterious wasting disease. If the ghost of Christmas present dresses like Santa and quotes Diet Pepsi commercials, that doesn’t keep him from making the eternal case for charity. If the ghost of Christmas past summons up not only old Fezziwig but also Tarzan and Little Orphan Annie, Frederick Douglass and the Washington Redskins, the hokum need not impinge on the message of choosing people over pelf, emotion over ambition.

In short, A Community Carol, Dickens transposed to the ghetto, is daring but definitely not disrespectful. In a season when most regional theaters abandon creative integrity for a gold-digging, anodyne version of A Christmas Carol replete with chestnuts (in both senses) but not a lot of consciousness raising, the adaptation now playing at Washington’s Arena Stage is a welcome alternative. Much of it is slapstick, too many of its gags come from easy TV references, and its worn-on-the-sleeve liberalism can play fast and loose with facts: Scrooge is condemned for not ponying up a ludicrously understated “few dollars a week” to provide health insurance for his secretary Cratchit and her jobless husband and six children. These faults are minor compared with amiable humor, skillful storytelling and an intelligent mix of today’s world with Dickens’ world view.

The remarkable thing about Community Carol is not, however, what it says but who is performing it. The cast of 30 includes equal numbers of professional actors and members of Washington’s impoverished Anacostia neighborhood, an area pioneered by slaves working farms they had bought in secret, and so long benighted that some areas lacked electricity in the 1930s. The amateurs are not stereotypical victims or lowlifes: while some come from straitened circumstances, one is a Berkeley-educated attorney, others are students at a selective high school for the performing arts, and one is a former seminarian who does managerial tasks at his church. All were recruited in the isolated ghetto across the Potomac, the “east of river community.”

This use of amateurs is a first for Arena. It is standard for the co- producing company, Cornerstone Theater. When Bill Rauch, virtually fresh out of Harvard, and a few pals launched Cornerstone in 1986, the aim was “community theater” — not some PTA revival of Blossom Time but updated classics performed mainly by residents of wherever the nomadic troupe temporarily settled. The hope was to bring local people together and spur a lasting drive among them for creative expression. Cornerstone’s 21 mostly rural productions have mingled art and agitprop, valuing political virtue as much as professional standards. They reflect, however, a genuine aesthetic, a rough-hewn epic sweep.

The noble aims and aggressive attitudinizing are both in evidence in Community Carol. Says Rauch, who directed and co-wrote: “We started years ago in places where the barriers were geographic. In cities some communities can be just as isolated because of other factors. We could tell Anacostia was responding because 270 people, by far a record for us, showed up for auditions. Urban work seems to be our future.”

For the most part, the amateurs are readily spotted, especially opposite the eminent Al Freeman Jr. (Malcolm X) as Scrooge. Freeman admits it “gives me pause” to have his craft, honed over decades, equated with a newfound hobby. He readily applauds one debut actor, however: Thomas Henry Brooks Jr., 66, who plays a handful of the 162 characters, most notably a pawnbroker with a steely manner and a Satchmo Armstrong voice. Says Brooks: “I strongly believed that an old man on crutches with no teeth wouldn’t get cast. When they called me back, I thought it was just keeping up appearances.” Brooks is a natural, with a commanding presence and instant believability. He is enough at ease offstage to question the script’s accuracy about Anacostia, where he has lived since he was three: “We didn’t have any rich black man, mean or otherwise. This play deals in pleasant generalities without getting down to the aches and pains.”

To an audience member who has sat through what feels like three hours of urban despair, albeit interwoven with homilies and hopes, that statement is startling. It is also a reminder of the real message of A Christmas Carol, in any form: Look at the forgotten and see them whole.