Vancouver Seasonal Theatre: Bats, BB Guns and "Bah Humbug!"

When Vancouver Playhouse director Glynis Leyshon saw Neworld Theatre’s awardwinning revision of Crime and Punishment, adapted and directed by James Fagan Tait, a few years ago, she knew she had found just the guy to blow the dust off the perennial holiday favourite, A Christmas Carol.

In fact, Tait strips the tinsel off the old chestnut and shines a light on darker edges of the well-known tale of greed and redemption. Expect a Carol unlike any you have ever seen.

Alex Diakun as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol“In my version, fourteen carollers meet on a blanket of snow and re-enact the story,” says Tait. “It takes place in 1843 but the language is contemporary. They speak the way we do.”

Tait’s imagination was unclouded by visions of productions past. He says he somehow managed never to even see Carol on stage before and only vaguely recalls the movie. His adaptation began at the source—Charles Dickens’ story from 1843—then he added layers of choreography as well as Joelysa Pankanea’s music in the formula that worked so well in the Dostoevsky project.

The Playhouse production of A Christmas Carol runs November 25 to December 23.

More traditional fare can be found at the Arts Club’s Granville Island Stage, November 30 to December 30, where Katrina Dunn directs A Christmas Story, the stage adaptation of a film that has become a classic in just the past 20 years. Nine-year-old Ralphie Parker fights adversity in the form of adults—Santa, even— who warn him that he’ll lose an eye if he gets his prized Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. Warm and fuzzy with merely implied violence to create holiday tension—there’s nothing more traditional than that.

Bats don’t exactly figure highly as an archetype in Christmas entertainment. A few bats, however, will alight inside the Waterfront Theatre on Granville Island this holiday season. Carousel Theatre presents a stage adaptation of Kenneth Oppel’s award-winning fantasy novel, Silverwing, the story of a colony of Silverwing bats migrating from the West Coast down to Central America.

“It’s a little bit of a departure from the usual Christmas fare,” says Carole Higgins, director of the children’s theatre. “But the themes—perseverance, overcoming adversity and the plight of the underdog—are relevant at any time.” Higgins wants to connect with her audience, and a character like Silverwing’s Shade (a bat) is more likely on the radar of children from the Harry Potter generation than, say, certain characters out of 19th-century London.

Silverwing runs from December 1 to 30.