Review: A HANUKKAH CAROL, OR GELT TRIP! THE MUSICAL at Round House Theatre

Charles Dickens wouldn't get it, but he's not the audience for the world première of A Hanukkah Carol, or Gelt Trip! The Musical. DMV audiences will; Rob Berliner (book and lyrics), Harrison Bryan (book & original concept), and Aaron Kenny (music) have deftly and faithfully adapted Dickens' holiday staple into a musical with the timing and level of loving parody resembling Something Rotten and Spamalot (and Little Mary Sunshine, for you senior musical theatre junkies) and an echoing of the musical styles of Jerry² (Jerry Bock and Jerry Herman). Tiny Tim becomes a kitten with a wooden leg (and she's a hand puppet!). A quartet of unseen musicians, briskly led from the keyboard by Marika Anne Countouris, make the audience feel as if they're attending Fiddler on the Roof one minute and La Cage aux Folles the next, thanks to the clever orchestrations of Charlie Rosen. Instead of Scrooge, this show tells the story of Chava Kanipshin (say it fast once or twice): not the name of a frum drag queen, just that of a striving "influencer" with a ring light, some followers, and the wrong idea about what matters in life; pretty much just. like. Scrooge. Until, well, . . . you know the plot.

Chava (performed by the sensational triple threat, Samantha Sayah) was bullied in school--teased because her goy peers couldn't pronounce her first name and/or wouldn't learn how. (This never stops in the real world; shout out to my student Jah'leel at Ron Brown College Preparatory High School in NE.) So Chava spends all her time posting on line and trolling for "likes," like her idol Mimi Marley (performed to the max by the versatile Kit Krull who plays several other men, women, and latkes equally perfectly); Chava ignores her Best Friend and loving parents (Bekah Zornosa, Aviva Pressman, and Steve Routman). She avoids family gatherings such as Channukah and no longer appreciates such old-fashioned family values (#bah chumbug--say THAT a few times, but it's not [ch] as in "church" or even as in "Christmas"; better yet, just go see the show.).

Chava gets worked over by the usual suspects. Nicole Halmos, terrific as Hanukkah Past, sings "A Bubbe Ditty (Biddy Bum)" at her (remember, Chava is the name of one of Tevye's daughters) and, among other things, has a wonderful way of stopping the show's action to lecture Chava ("Sha") before reversing it because the show must go on ("Un sha"). She's not your bubbe's bubbe: more like a pissed off Maccabean at the first Hanuka. Halmos then leads the Company in explaining to Chava what's gone wrong in her youth ("Us Against the Bullies"), a hilarious anthem along the lines of "I Am What I Am" with a dash of "L'chiam" that manages to provide 2500 years of Jewish history, lots of laughs, and a tongue-lashing of Chava all in one number. Next comes Hanukkah Present, more of a mensch than his counterpart from the Past, played by the multi-talented Jordan Friend who sings to her that "The Present is a Gift," pun both somehow intended and unintended. Anyway, no spoilers: A Hanukkah Carol, or Gelt Trip! The Musical has a kvell-making happy ending. It's just that it's been translated ("circumcised" says a throwaway lyric near the end) into another culture. We need a little circumcision, right this very minute. ("Candles in the window/carols at the spinet").

The writers did create one flaw, and the actor playing it made it worse. The Artful Dodger did not narrate Dickens' A Christmas Carol. The novella has a narrator, but it's a distant, omniscient, first person speaker who does not join the story or characters. Katrina Michaels' Cockney accent as the Dickensian Orphan is nearly incomprehensible, and, over-amplified as she is, she becomes further distorted. Round House's lovely space seats c. 340; the sound for this show has been "designed" for a 2500 seat house (that's the capacity of the Kennedy Center Opera House). These eight talented and trained Equity singer-actors would have been perfectly audible in this space without microphones. It's part of the otherwise outstanding Director/Choreographer Marlo Hunter's job description to notice and manage that. On the other hand (in this case, there is), she has facilitated quoting in movement the 60-year old choreography of Jerry³ Robbins for Fiddler. . . . Michaels, too, excels elsewhere in the script, doing a great job playing Past Chava; her musical theatre chops shine especially when teamed with Bekah Zornosa who plays, with great flair, both Past and Current Barb Kratzyt--say that . . . oh, never mind; the English spelling of the character name is Cratchit. But that Cockney accent sinks a character who is already a fish out of water.

Scenic Designer Andrew Cohen's glorious set rotates from Chava's bedroom to her parents' home and elsewhere. Above is a marvelous mural of Anatevka lower Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge. Ivania Stack's fabulous costumes from 1843 to 2024--detailed, in vogue, often fun and funny--they're a real body of work. And there are dressers backstage to help with multiple, swift changes (as Peter Falk's Columbo said in a movie once, "I can't see you, but I know you're there.") And Max Doolittle's lighting does lots to keep up with the many shifts of location, mood, and scope, except for the part where the lights shine directly into the audience's eyes--they do know that, when that happens, the audience can't see the show, right? Genna Beth Davidson's puppets make a very brief moment near the end very special. Andrea Moore's Properties Design includes some fold-out food that Hanukkah Present uses to tempt Chava into the holiday spirit; watch for the fun item being schlepped across the stage for proper properties delivery to Ford's Theatre.

This wonderful, tuneful, 85-minute production runs through December 29. "One month to Christmas/One month to Christmas/Still enough time to do your Christmas shopping," and ah freilichen Hanukkah to all and to all a good night (or matinee).

[Photo by Margot Schulman of Samantha Sayah (Chava Kanipshin), Nicole Halmos (Hanukkah Past), Katrina Michaels (Past Chava), and Bekah Zornosa (Past Barb) in A HANUKKAH CAROL, OR GELT TRIP! THE MUSICAL at Round House Theatre.]

 

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