Atlanta Theaters Test The Boundaries Of Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’

At Dad’s Garage, Ebenezer Scrooge sits working in his counting house on Christmas Eve when he is visited by …  Frosty the Snowman.

Dad’s rendition is called “Invasion Christmas Carol,” and director and ensemble member Matt Horgan explains that the cast spends weeks rehearsing a more-or-less faithful adaptation of Dickens. The only thing standing in their way in each performance is an improviser playing an invading character. That invader is kept secret from the rest of the cast until they appear onstage.

“It might be Jack the Ripper, or Hulk Hogan, or Cookie Monster … doesn’t matter,” Horgan explains. “And about five minutes in, this character busts in, and who knows what’s gonna happen for the rest of the show because the rest of the cast now has to start improvising in the style of Dickens and ‘yes-anding’ what this idiot invader is bringing to the table.”

Across town, more characters from “A Christmas Carol” are finding themselves in unfamiliar environs. Namely, the Wren’s Nest house museum in West End, which director Brian Clowdus has transformed into Scrooge’s estate.

You might know Clowdus from the wildly ambitious outdoor productions he creates as artistic director of Serenbe Playhouse. In this 140-year-old house, since the actors and audience are all going to be in close quarters with one another, Clowdus’ “Christmas Carol Experience” invites the audience into the story.

“I like to take the root of the story and turn it on its head,” he says, “and make the audience an active participant, as opposed to someone who’s just sitting in a dark theater, watching.”

When the audience arrives at the Wren’s Nest, they find themselves being asked to help decorate. Clowdus has pared the story down to center on three women important to Scrooge, Mrs. Fezziwig, his lost love Belle and his nephew’s wife, Clara.

“And all these three women have decided to finally put the Christmas spirit into Scrooge by throwing this surprise Christmas Eve party for him,” Clowdus explains.

You can imagine how Scrooge might react when he arrives to find a hundred people in his house shouting “Merry Christmas,” and his subsequent outburst triggers the ghost of Jacob Marley to arrive. The three women then transform into the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, and they lead Scrooge and the audience on an immersive journey.

An immersive journey like Clowdus’ “Christmas Carol Experience” and the purposeful train wreck on stage at Dad’s Garage are both pretty far from Dickens’ original story, and yet both of them remain faithful to the spirit of their source. Even with the tinkering that Clowdus has done, all of the characters he’s using are in the original. He’s just given the central roles to the women in the story.

Speaking of centering women, Dad’s Garage’s Ebenezer Scrooge turns out, on closer inspection, to be ensemble member Perry Frost. She follows in a long tradition of Dad’s casting women in the role, including past Scrooges Megan Leahy and Amber Nash.

“I would say I’m playing a whiny Scrooge,” Frost says. “My Scrooge has very childish tantrums and probably thinks that he’s very sophisticated, but he’s not. He’s very petulant and goes off on people. And he’s very attached to this blanket that he has … ‘Oh spirit,’” she switches into character, “‘if anything were to happen to my blanket, I don’t know what I’d do.’”

Part of the reason that “A Christmas Carol” can withstand this re-imagining, or outright gutting depending on how you look at it, is the strength of its protagonist. Ebenezer Scrooge is the guy you love to hate — whether he’s being played for laughs like Frost’s or like David Devries, the Alliance Theatre’s Scrooge.

“Every year I just try to find the authenticity,” he tells me just before stepping into rehearsal. “What is it to look back on your life and find nothing but anger and resentment and toil … it’s a difficult journey, you know?”

Of these three productions, the Alliance’s is the most traditional take on the story. The theater has been doing “A Christmas Carol” (by their best count) for 29 years now, so director Rosemary Newcott knows the story inside and out.

Asked what makes the story so resilient as to be able to withstand all the edits and amendments and still be “A Christmas Carol,” she points to its familiarity.

“So if you take it and travel slightly differently with it, you can enjoy that journey,” Newcott says. “Because it’s almost like a friend coming to see you and surprising you with something new about themselves.”

In this case, I suppose, that “something new” could mean that Frosty the Snowman is now part of the story. Brian Clowdus points to the strength of Dickens’ writing.

“The formula is very simple,” he explains. “You can really state it in a couple sentences. I think the formula is very clean, and you can kind of hit the elements of ‘Christmas Carol’ and really change the setting, the time and who all is actively involved.”

I should say here that, like any other play that’s both well-known and has seen as many adaptations as this — think of something like “Romeo and Juliet” —there are as many interpretations of “A Christmas Carol” as there are productions of it. And with these three, I’m barely skimming the surface of the story’s life in Atlanta this season. There are productions at The Shakespeare Tavern, Aurora Theatre, Marietta’s Theatre in the Square, just to name a few.

One of the things I heard echoed in all of my conversations about this story was that whether you’re staying faithful to the source material or pulling it apart, whether you’re on Team “Bah Humbug” or Team Christmas Spirit, Perry Frost and Matt Horgan of Dad’s Garage explain that the reason that theater artists and audiences alike keep coming back year after year is because of Dickens’ message.

“When he wrote it, there was huge disparity of wealth in his home country,” Horgan says. “And the prevailing theme was like ‘well, poor people deserve what they get.’ Unfortunately, that still seems to be a pretty prevailing opinion, so I think that the themes he was trying to address I think that’s still a necessity as it ever was. Maybe more so now.”

“I think the idea of redemption is one we all hope is universal,” Frost says. “The idea that no matter what happened in your past and no matter how badly you’ve mired yourself in the consequences of that in the present, the future can always be a little bit brighter.”

Those two messages are both simple and potent: Be kind, and no one is beyond redemption.

They’re particularly powerful at the end of the year during the holidays, when we might be a little more susceptible to absorbing them, even if that takes a bunch of jokes at Dad’s Garage or being made part of the story at the Wren’s Nest. The time before you is your own, to make amends in.

Dad’s Garage’s “Invasion Christmas Carol” runs through Dec. 29. “Christmas Carol Experience” is at the Wren’s Nest through the Dec. 30. And the Alliance Theatre’s production is at the Cobb Energy Center through Christmas Eve.