THE OTHER CHRISTMAS CAROL

A clever, moving tale of a ghost searching for grace

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Boy does it suck to be Jacob Marley. You die a lonely death, are doomed to perdition, and come back as a tortured ghost laden with chains to warn your former partner Ebenezer Scrooge of his fate. Then what happens? Scrooge — by every measure a worser man — sees the error of his ways and gets redeemed, while we hear no more about Marley, who is presumably somewhere in the netherworld rattling around for eternity.

I have to presume that this fundamental unfairness rankled writer Tom Mula. Mula played the part of Ebenezer Scrooge on the Goodman stage for years, and then wrote a wonderful book about the entire story from Marley’s point of view. Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol was published in 1995 to rapturous reviews and subsequently turned into a radio play and a one-man show.

Lifeline Theatre’s Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol returns for the second year (it netted a Jeff nomination for Phil Timberlake in 2024) with its production unchanged. The show is staged with minimal fuss: a small table with a goblet and candle, three blocks, and a shimmering curtain of stars reaching almost to the ceiling. Apart from providing a lovely backdrop, the height of the curtain also has the effect of diminishing Marley in stature — an effect that comes into stunning relief at the end of the play. The focus in this show is purely on the actor, although Diane Fairchild’s Jeff-winning lighting design does a fair bit of heavy lifting as well.

“Marley was dead: to begin with.”

The show opens with the same incontrovertible fact as Dickens’s story. Only from there, we leave Scrooge behind (for now) and follow Marley’s passage after death, through a sort of bureaucratic office — shades of Beetlejuice (1988) — where he is assigned to a plane of ghostly existence and a companion: a bogle (a creature out of Scottish folklore, most akin to a goblin). It is here that the chains drop on Marley, and he realizes what his afterlife holds in store for him. But there is a loophole: if Marley can redeem one human being before cock’s crow, the chains will be lifted.

Mula’s ingenious conceit is to make Jacob Marley the orchestrator of the events that unfold in A Christmas Carol; throughout the play, Marley is actor, puppet master, puppet, and finally a voyeur — having set into motion events that he can no longer control.

Playing nineteen different characters, Timberlake is a marvel — never overdoing it, and still managing to imbue each role with distinct personality. When multiple characters interact in a scene, there is no confusion as to who is speaking, even as he switches rapidly between them. His bogle and the doddering bureaucrat in the afterlife’s office are particularly delightful.

For this show to work, we need to see Marley evolve. Even though we see the other characters from the original story in bits and pieces, everything is reframed in the context of Marley, including Scrooge’s redemption — and Timberlake is simply exquisite in that regard. Using his expressive face and voice, as well as his wiry body, he creates a chilling portrait of a stiff, deeply unpleasant man whose personality softens and warms throughout the show so gradually and naturally that when we reach his final form, it’s hard to reconcile the sad, regretful man sitting alone onstage with the obstinate, unfeeling miser he once was.

Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol is delightful, witty, and very clever (the writing, particularly for the Bogle, reminded me a lot of one of my favorite authors, Terry Pratchett), but what lingers most is its emotional heft, which comes to the fore in its final scenes. There are no boisterous children, Christmas bells, or laughter in the streets. The largest turkey in the butcher’s window isn’t being plucked and roasted. There are no parties and nary a noel to be heard.

There is just an old man, sitting on a box, gazing at an unending cosmos of twinkling stars. Ebenezer Scrooge has been remade. Marley has successfully fulfilled his near-impossible task. But he isn’t celebrating. On Timberlake’s elegantly worn face, we see traces of sadness for the life Marley lived. And relief. He has redeemed his eternal soul.

Like the best Christmas carols, it’s a beautiful yet melancholic moment.

Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol has been an annual Chicago holiday tradition at The Goodman for forty-eight years and counting. Here’s hoping that Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol at Lifeline Theatre is the beginning of another.

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photos of Phil Timberlake by Jackie Jasperson

Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol
Lifeline Theatre, 6912 N. Glenwood Ave.
2 hours with intermission
Fri & Sat at 7:30; Sun at 2:30
ends on December 21, 2025
for tickets ($28-$48), call 773.761.4477 or visit Lifeline

for more shows, visit Theatre in Chicago

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