If you are looking to kick off the Holiday season with a taste for the macabre, then join Phantasmagoria as they present “Ghost Stories” this Christmas season. They will bring to life and the bitter sweet taste of death to not one but TWO whimsical classics. The well-loved A Christmas Carol, A Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens, followed by Oscar Wilde’s rollicking The Canterville Ghost.
I sat in on a dress rehearsal for the show at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. The set felt like an abandoned attic with carousel horses flanking the stage. Projections on a large screen behind the set changed the settings with ease. I fell in love with the faint flickering candle light that illuminated the various corners of the stage. That meant I needed to keep the scene dark so the candles could shine.
A Christmas Carol is a well loved and very familiar classic. Phantasmagoria added its dark and vaudevillian steampunk styled flair to the story. John DiDonna as Scrooge lived in the old man’s skin. I have seen him perform this roll many times over the years. Daniel Cooksley as Marley, draped in chains did an amazing job filling the stage with his his twisted and agonized self. Of the three ghosts, the ghost of Christmas future was magnificently designed. Much larger that life, the dark draped figure gestured with gnarly black branches for hands.
The Canterville Ghost offered a much lighter tale full of light hearted dance. It was the yin to Dickens dark and foreboding Yang. There are two more performances December 3–4, 2022 at the Alexis & Jim Pugh Theater, in the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, 8 p.m. and 2 p.m. Tickets are about $35.