SUN, SAND & SCROOGE,
DICKENS IN THE GASLAMP

The Old Globe is presenting Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, reshaping the classic short novel into a parody titled Ebenezer Scrooge’s BIG San Diego Christmas Show. The one-act play provides 80 minutes of jokes, wisecracks, quips, wit, and asides, dispensed at warp speed by a cast of five multi-talented actors who seem to be having as much fun on and around the Globe stage as the audience laughing in their seats.

Josh Breckenridge, Jacque Wilke, James Joseph O'Neil, Susana Cordón, Will Carlyon

The show has been co-authored by Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen, who have previously tickled Old Globe playgoers with their wry and comical revisions in Crime and Punishment, a Comedy and Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors. The playwrights have relocated the story from 19th-century London to the United States. The conceit is that young Ebenezer Scrooge has settled in San Diego to take advantage of the business opportunities over here. The change in scenery provides the playwrights with abundant opportunities to target San Diego’s quirks, such as the San Diego Padres, Trader Joe’s, and the problems associated with local free parking (which received the loudest laugh of the night at last night’s night), along with countless other bits of city culture.

Susana Cordón and James Joseph O'Neil

The play broadly follows the original Dickens. Scrooge is still a miser and is still visited on magical Christmas Eve by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. By the end of the evening, Scrooge has changed from a grouchy miser into a reformed and happy man who becomes a benefactor to his clerk Bob Cratchit and especially Cratchit’s crippled little son Tiny Tim.

Josh Breckenridge, Will Carlyon, Jacque Wilke, James Joseph O'Neil, Susana Cordón

James Joseph O’Neil is a Scrooge who is not just a crabby old codger. He seems to be very comfortable dealing in his nastiness. Yet his reclamation as a reformed human being is credible without being gooey, and it’s the biggest heart-warming moment of the story. Josh Breckenridge, Will Carlyon, Susan Wilke, and Jacque Wilke fill out the ensemble, changing characters in the blink of an eye as they scoot from one level to another and from entrance to entrance. Carlyon’s performance as Tiny Tim, which is part puppetry, is a particular delight.

The designers are Adam Koch (scenery), David I. Reynoso (costumes), Amanda Zieve (lighting), and Bart Fasbender (sound), and the smoothness of the staging is a tribute to their skills.

James Joseph O'Neil, Susana Cordón, and Jacque Wilke

The performance ends with the five actors led by O’Neil delivering a happy coda with each cast member playing an instrument as they engage with the audience in an extended sing-along. The performers earned much audience goodwill by tossing candy into the reaching crowd.

I left the theater exhilarated by a perfect performance of an irresistible production. Everything worked, for 80 gleeful minutes. And by the by, the Old Globe theater next door is currently presenting its hugely popular annual Christmas show Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas! They make a superb holiday parlay.

Susana Cordón, Will Carlyon, and James Joseph O'Neil

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photos by Rich Soublet II

Ebenezer Scrooge’s BIG San Diego Christmas Show
The Old Globe
Sheryl and Harvey White Theater, 1363 Old Globe Way in San Diego
Tues–Sun 7 p.m.; Sat & Sun 2 p.m.
80 minutes, no intermission
ends on December 28, 2025
for tickets ($70 and up), visit The Old Globe

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