PicksInSix Review: Manual Cinema's "Christmas Carol" - Studebaker Theater
PHANTASMIC: SCROOGE OF SHADOW AND STRINGS!
PicksInSix® Review | Guest Contributor | Sarah Fiorello
Emmy Award-winning Manual Cinema returns to the historic Studebaker Theater with their one-of-a-kind production of “Christmas Carol,” adapted from the Charles Dickens novel. Now in its fifth year, “Christmas Carol” was born on Zoom screens during the pandemic in December 2020 before moving to Writer’s Theatre in 2022 where it was first mounted for a live audience. This classic story, playing through December 28th, is reimagined in a way that is sure to give you hope for not just the holiday season, but for the future of live performance.
Manual Cinema is a Chicago-born performance collective founded in 2010, perhaps most known for “The Forger,” their 2017 Emmy Award-winning video for The New York Times. A modern take that is true to the novel, “Christmas Carol” is redefining theatricality with their multimodal approach to this stage adaptation: shadow puppetry, original live music, multi-screen cameras and projections, puppets, actors, and most importantly: heart.
As the houselights dim, we drop in on Aunt Trudy, spending her first Christmas alone after the passing of Joe, her husband/long-time partner/it’s just a little bit complicated. Left to begrudgingly carry on his Christmas Eve tradition for her quasi-in-laws, Aunt Trudy stumbles through a half-hearted performance of Joe’s Christmas Carol puppet show, amidst the pandemic familiarities of no contact food delivery and above average alcohol consumption. Before long, we see the lines blur between the story Trudy is telling and her own, as her ‘For Sale’ home fills with the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future.
The story is seamlessly anchored by LaKecia Harris’s performance as Aunt Trudy, and the production comes to vivid life with storyboards and puppet design by Co-Artistic Director Drew Dir (with additional puppet design and fabrication by the Chicago Puppet Studio) and original score and sound design by Co-Artistic Directors Ben Kauffman and Kyle Vegster. With a stellar group of live musicians, magic-making puppeteers, and reportedly over 300 cues of live, prerecorded sound effects, “Christmas Carol” accomplishes something fresh, unique, and at the cutting-edge of human-powered creativity.
Manual Cinema’s creators of “Christmas Carol” lean into the emotional heart of this story and the holiday season, not shying away from the flip side of all that holiday cheer: the inevitable sadness of lost loved ones. This production provides a space to journey through grief and joy, isolation and connection, regret and compassion. It brings as much heart as it does ingenuity: a truly special night of theatre.
I’ll be back before the holiday season is out, no doubt with a friend or two in tow. Manual Cinema has found a new supporter in me, and I look forward to their next local production “The 4th Witch”—an inversion of Macbeth—presented as part of the International Puppet Theater Festival in January. I’ll be hard pressed to miss whatever future phantasms Manual Cinema brings to Chicago, keeping creativity alive and well in our fair Second City.
GUEST CONTRIBUTOR | SARAH FRANCES FIORELLO is a graduate of Shenandoah Conservatory with a BFA in Music Theatre and a Chicago-based poet, writer, and performer. Instagram: @writtenbysarahfrances
PHOTO|Jenn Udoni, Franco Images
Manual Cinema
presents
Christmas Carol
Studebaker Theater
Fine Arts Building
410 S Michigan Avenue
through Dcember 28
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