The title character in “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol” was dead, but that didn’t keep him from turning in a lively preview performance Thursday for Oklahoma City Theatre Company.
The play by Tom Mula, based on the story by Charles Dickens, was performed on a nearly bare set, with minimal props, in the intimate, underground City Space Theatre at Civic Center Music Hall, 201 N Walker.
This lack of props and a conventional set helped the four cast members emphasize the wonderfully theatrical elements of Mula’s offbeat, “storytelling theatre” approach to the Christmas classic.
Tall and commanding, Don Taylor was terrifying but tentative — and humorously, too easily discouraged in early scenes — as Marley’s ghost, trying to win his own freedom as he learns to haunt Scrooge.
After intermission, Taylor’s Marley was memorable as a “ragamuffin lad,” taking his ex-partner on a giddy, Peter Pan-like flight back to his own, more disturbing “Christmas past,” rather than Scrooge’s.
Clad in a long green coat, Taylor also succeeded in embodying Christmas Present’s need to bless everybody he hadn’t noticed before, including Scrooge, as he becomes “engulfed in the spirit of Christmas.”
Nearly as delightful as Taylor’s was the sprightly and engaging, yet nuanced and understated performance turned in by Carly Conklin.
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