Newsday  "Christmas Carol" review

Copyright 1994, Newsday Inc.

'Carol' A Huge Musical Present

By Linda Winer. STAFF WRITER

A CHRISTMAS CAROL. Musical based on the Charles Dickens story, with music by Alan Menken, book by director Mike Ockrent and lyricist LynnAhrens. Sets by Tony Walton, costumes by William Ivey Long, choreography by Susan Stroman, lights by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, musicdirection by Paul Gemignani. With Walter Charles, Nick Corley, RobertWestenberg, Ken Jennings, Michael Mandell, Jeff Keller. Paramount Theater, Madison Square Garden, Seventh Avenue at 33rd Street. Through Jan. 1.

SPEAKING OF contracts with America, of blaming the poor for theirmisfortunes and making the children pay, here comes Charles Dickens -bless him - to remind us that the riches and cruelties of Victorian England are right outside our door.

Well, actually that world is inside the Paramount Theater, of all cavernous monstrosities, at Madison Square Garden, no less, now that aremarkably grand musical version of "A Christmas Carol" has transformed the hall and the local holiday scene for what's likely to be many yules to come.

Let's put aside, for now, the irony of spending $12 million on a 90-minute spectacle about the evils of selfish materialism (much less charging $22.75 to park the car).

Onstage is a huge, yet strangely intimate, beauty of a beloved potboiler, with music by Alan Menken, designed and staged with affectionand imagination and respect for the ennobling verities of kitsch by experts. Some scenes may well be too dark, even ghoulish, for very young children. For the rest, however, it should be mostly magic.

The first good signs are the ushers, kindlygents in English derbies, woolly vests and red mufflers, not to mention the vendors hawking "fresh baked brownies" through the aisles.

The 5,100-seat hall is indeed overwhelming, with a quality that designer Tony Walton has likened to "around 17 Ramada Inns squashed together" - that is, it has the capacity to compete with the rival Radio City Christmas Show, though hardly the architectural charm.

But Walton ("Guys and Dolls") and director Mike Ockrent ("Crazy for You") have extended the vast playing area halfway up the walls, so we feel surrounded - no, actually embraced - by the stores and houses of late (slightly updated Dickens) Victorian London. Think the warm glow of life-sized candle-lit dollhouses, then add the lurking chill of industrial revolution, circa "Sweeney Todd."

William Ivey Long's hundreds of costumes are terrifically specific. Everything is miked (sigh), of course, but there is the reassuring sight of a serious orchestra, led by no one less than Paul Gemignani, and the sound of Michael Starobin's lush orchestrations.

If you've heard more about the Event and the Environment than the music and the scads of performers, well, that seems all right for an occasion piece in which Scrooge (the elegant Walter Charles) flies over rows of seats, paper snowflakes fall on the paying customers, a live horse pulls a mother's hearse, and individual characters mostly look like ants.

Menken, a theater man before "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin" and "The Little Mermaid," has written an amiable score with pleasant Lynn Ahrens lyrics that are not afraid to take the occasional bite. Things begin, ominously, with a crush of "Phantom" chords in a graveyard and return there with the Ghost of Christmas Future (a ballerina in red?) to let Scrooge watch people with shovels "Dance on Your Grave."

Class inequities are neatly established in a confident crowd-bustle scene with "Jolly, Rich and Fat," and Scrooge sings an anthem for theincreasingly popular ostrich position of our time, "Nothing to Do With Me." His journey through Christmas Past - from the family tragedy thatmade young Scrooge so tight, to the happy ball where he met his wife(Emily Skinner), to her disgust at his greed - somehow manages to be both busy and concise. A soft-pop Disney ballad, "A Place Called Home," connects Scrooge's childhood pain with his brief romantic bliss."Christmas Together," in the contrasting homes of poor Cratchit (Nick Corley) and Scrooge's comfortable nephew (Robert Westenberg), has an"Into the Woods" jaunty patter.

Ockrent, who wrote the book with Ahrens, has given himself seemingly foolhardy technical hurdles in his 14 action-packed scenes,then ups the ante by solving them with - here's a funny word for a show with Day-Glo ghosts - taste. The houses around us light up forfestivities, with charming cardboard partygoers twirling inside.

For the live dancers, we have some witty choreography by SusanStroman ("Crazy for You"), including "Link by Link," a macabre march-tango for dead misers in chains, and "Abundance and Charity," a ludicrously droll girlies-as-fruit number for the daddies in the audience who wanted to see the Rockettes. Oh, and some of the children do not sing well at all. Lighten up, it's the season.