By Ernest Kearney — David Mynne’s one-man show of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations knocked me off my feet last year. Sadly, his solo rendering of A Christmas Carol, also by Dickens, merely shoved me a little. This was not the fault of Mynne himself, who is a consummate performer and thoroughly entertaining.
Rather it was his choice of material. Dickens’ tale of a youth’s hardscrabble life in London at the dawning of the Industrial Age is grim and gritty and locked in the harsh realities of the day. In his one-man show of this epic, somewhat, autobiographical novel Mynne’s fantastic imaginings were able to capture and convey the grim, gritty and harsh reality of Dickens’ work brilliantly.
But A Christmas Carol offers a different challenge. Here the work is one of remarkable imagination and fantasy, and Mynne’s own doesn’t serve to communicate the words of Dickens so much as to compete with them.
Mynne’s bare bone approach which served to transport the epic quality of Great Expectations so superbly, is hamstrung here. Minimal lighting and a barrenness of both sound and music underplays that which will not tolerate being underplayed, and hence he falters in capturing the wondrous essence of the three ghosts of Christmas and a man’s spiritual redemption that spans one magical night.
Not that the evening is not without merit or Mynne not a magnificent artist, but the material does not allow his true artistry to shine.
And that would have been a truly delightful Christmas present for everyone.
Oh, and for parents who bring their whiny children to the theatre, big chunks of coal stuffed into their….stockings.
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The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
Presented
A Christmas Carol
In A Special Run
Dec. 4 — 8
At The
Lovelace Studio Theatre
Directed by Simon Harvey
Performed by David Mynne
Adapted by Andrew McPherson
Additional script by Simon Harvey and David Mynne
