A Kiwi carol

By GREG DIXON

Tiny Tim's mum is quite the baker. While the little lad - best known for his timeless Christmas line, "God bless us, every one" - is nowhere to be seen, his mum's biscuits beckon from a plastic container sitting on the tearoom table of the Auckland Theatre Company's Dickensian rehearsal space.

"She's been baking for us, we're a lucky cast," says director Jennifer Ward-Lealand, offering me a chocolate chip cookie.

Delicious. Just the sort of home-made confection you want on your plate at this time of year - much like the ATC's final production for 2004, A Christmas Carol.

The company had been promising to come over all rock'n'roll for us this year. It had earlier announced a production of the musical Grease for its final show.

But it will instead be the Christmas favourites that are Scrooge, the Cratchits, the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future - and, of course, Tiny Tim played by young Eddie Giffney (with support from his mum's biscuits), who will see theatre-goers into the silly season.

But like the bickies fattening up the cast, this Carol comes with a distinctly local flavour. New Zealand satirist and comedy writer Dave Armstrong - he's written for Spin Doctors, Skitz and The Seimis - has adapted Charles Dickens' classic for the stage and given it that peculiarly South Hemisphere twist of having a Christmas play in the sun rather than the snow.

"In New Zealand we have our Christmas in summer, but we also seem to be able to cope quite well with Christmas cards, snow, Santa and all that Northern Hemisphere stuff. We integrate somehow," Ward-Lealand says.

"And Dave's done that with the production. He's set it now. It is 2004 and the Cratchits are West Aucklanders. But we still have the narrator being a kind of a Dickensian link. He's given this narration in full-on Victorian Dickens-speak and yet everything that is presented is in New Zealand. It's lovely."

In Armstrong's Carol, the action moves between a picture-postcard Victorian Christmas - the stage design promises to be something like a 19th century pop-up book - and the Cratchit family's Kiwi-as barbeque. His bah-humbugging Ebenezer Scrooge - played by popular, award-winning actor Mark Hadlow (TV's Willy Nilly) - is all laptops and free-market principles.

Comic actor Hori Ahipene, who will play the three ghosts, says the adaptation has him relating to a story he knew well from television, but had never particularly related to.

"It was like this old tale, an old moralistic tale," he says. "Now what Dave has done is contemporise it. And once we got into rehearsal I realised how relevant this story was, when for the last 35 years, it was just this thing that was on at Christmas that I didn't bother watching.

"It's not really political at all, but he's really captured the essence of what the story is and reminds us that this is pertinent to everything we do. It's about society, the world. Do we follow the capitalist track where we keep widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots? And where does that take us? Or do we stop and think and embrace. I think society's maturity can be measured by how it takes care of those who are less fortunate - and that's what this play explores."

Armstrong's adaptation is no pantomime, however, despite the season. "Pantos in many ways are caricature," says Ward-Lealand. "I think this is about character and, I think, about what these people go through. Yes, there is all the humour and satire, but the stuff that really matters is there too, the potential loss of Tiny Tim. Anyone who is a parent, anyone who has a child close to them, will feel that."

Nor is it a musical, though it does include Christmas carols like God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and seasonal songs such as Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.

"I wouldn't describe this as a musical," Ward-Lealand says. "It's a play with music. The music is underscoring the story a lot of the time and just lifts it up to the next level."

What it is, also, is a morality tale. Why are they so popular at Christmas? Singer-actress Jackie Clarke, who has been cast as Lorraine Cratchit, says at this time of year we pack away our pessimism.

"It's about layers of cynicism most of the time," she says. "Christmas is the one time of year where, as an intelligent human being, you can actually let all those layers of cynicism go and get back to basics, to all that family means. And you can't fight it."

Much like the pull of old Ebenezer. Scrooge is at the heart of the story, the heart of this show, and he remains fiction's favourite curmudgeon because there is a little bit of Scrooge in everybody, Clarke reckons.

"He's like an awful talkback person who says all those terrible things that maybe, for a minute, you think yourself, but probably won't say out loud.

"But when you see glimpses of Scrooge's past you realise that he wasn't always like that, he's hardened up. It is about those layers of cynicism. But the more of those little glimpses he has of when he used to care, that's what keeps you hooked.

"His story resonates. Every year we get this kind of rebirth. Whether you believe in the Christian side of it or not, it still has that kind of feeling for us. Even the most miserly of us say 'Merry Christmas'."

Musical theatre

*What: A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, adapted by Dave Armstrong

*Where and when: SkyCity Theatre, Nov 11-Dec 12