Quick Take
Santa Cruz Shakespeare moves into the holiday season and into downtown Santa Cruz with the first of what it hopes will be many years of an annual tradition, the production of the Charles Dickens classic "A Christmas Carol."
It could be the most familiar story in the English-speaking world (non-religious division, of course). “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens is a cultural touchstone, a source of endless cultural references, and a beloved allegory for the human capacity for redemption.
And it’s also the Santa Cruz theater world’s newest annual tradition.
On Saturday, Santa Cruz Shakespeare presents its first performance of the Dickens classic, which runs through Christmas Eve, at the Veterans Memorial Building in downtown Santa Cruz.
SCS has already announced that it is bringing back “Carol” in 2025 (so, yes, “tradition” is an appropriate term here). For its summer season, SCS wouldn’t think of staging, say, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in back-to-back years. But the holiday season is a different creature. Much in the same way that “The Nutcracker” attracts audiences every December and families gather for an annual screening of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” SCS artistic director Charles Pasternak believes that Santa Cruz has room for another holiday ritual.
“I think it’s beautiful that ballets do ‘The Nutcracker’ and choral groups do ‘The Messiah,’” he said. “These are traditional, but it’s a time of tradition and community coming together around ritual.”
In another way, the new production of “Carol” marks the continuation of another once-popular local theater custom. From the late 1990s into the 2000s, Shakespeare Santa Cruz — the predecessor theater company to Santa Cruz Shakespeare — staged “pantos,” musical comedies traditionally presented during the holiday season, every December. Those productions were usually well-known fairy tales adapted for the stage, often by Santa Cruz playwright Kate Hawley.
The primary difference between Shakespeare Santa Cruz and SCS was that the former had an affiliation with the theater arts department at UC Santa Cruz, and had both indoor theater space and student helpers that the offspring company did not have. The pantos, said Pasternak, “were financially possible because of that collaboration.”
When Pasternak took over the reins of the company from founding artistic director Mike Ryan in 2023, one of his first moves was to revive the company’s holiday presence on the local theater calendar. First he turned to Dickens, then he turned to Ryan, who not only helmed SCS for its first decade, but remains its singular most popular actor. In the first production of “Carol,” Ryan takes on the iconic role of Ebenezer Scrooge, the miserable penny-pinching misanthrope at the center of the story. Pasternak, who is directing the new production, also enlisted another popular stage name in town, longtime Jewel Theater Co. artistic director Julie James, who plays both the ghostly Jacob Marley and the Ghost of Christmas Present, among other smaller parts.
With costuming coming from SCS legend B. Modern, “Carol” will keep the story’s Victorian England vibe, for the most part. The small, versatile cast also includes Charlotte Munson — who played Rosalind in “As You Like It” and Horatio in “Hamlet” last summer — Andrea Sweeney Blanco and Robert Zelaya. Child actors Lincoln Best, Aria Atkinson, Joseph Pratt Lukefahr and Sigrid Breidenthal round out the cast.
“A Christmas Carol” also marks a bold move in the literal sense for the company, relocating from its gorgeous hilltop home near the DeLaveaga Golf Course to downtown Santa Cruz. It’s a signal that Pasternak and his company are looking to expand their audience from the loyal base that populates its summer performances. “Carol” is what’s known in the arts as a “crowd pleaser,” a property that has plenty of mass appeal that might at the same time not thrill some theater audiences that put a premium on novelty or innovation. Pasternak cuts off such talk that SCS is falling under the sway of crass commercialism.
“I know so many theaters in this country where ‘A Christmas Carol’ is the only show they do all year that makes money. It’s sort of the backbone of what they do. They do it so they’re able to fund the rest of their season. I don’t think in those kind of cutthroat commercial terms. I believe that communities love this play, and love having that tradition. Many members of those communities may not see much other theater, but they go to ‘Christmas Carol’ every year.”
The Vets Hall is an unusual place to stage theater, but Pasternak said that he and his team are taking best advantage of it. “I really do love elements of the building,” he said, but added that he hopes, in future years, “A Christmas Carol” can be adapted to other venues, perhaps even travel to other cities as a kind of road show.
Still, this first year is an experiment in working outside the Audrey Stanley Grove at DeLaveaga, and in cultivating new audiences who do not necessarily know what SCS has to offer. The thing about traditions is that they all started somewhere.
“I really don’t have all the answers,” said Pasternak. “We’ll just see how this first year goes. Next year, I’m sure I’ll have a much wider perspective. This year, I’m just trying to stay practical and optimistic at the same time.”
“A Christmas Carol” opens Saturday, Nov. 23, and runs through Tuesday, Dec. 24, at the Veterans Memorial Building in downtown Santa Cruz.
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