Ebenezer Scrooge has assiduously avoided accountability his entire life. Until that night he was visited by three ghosts. However, his redemption is short lived. Now he’s taking the ghosts and Jacob Marley to court for compensatory and punitive damages.
Bill McNulty, who plays the skinflint in “The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge,” addresses the elephant in the room.
“There's this underlying mystery of what happened? Why did this guy turn back into what he once was? The answer to that is there in the play, but you'll have to come and see it if you want to know,” McNulty said.
McNulty does offer this clue.
“It's the past that Scrooge is most affected by and most frightened of,” he noted.
Scrooge believed himself to be soft-hearted, hard-working, clean living, thrifty and kind. Being confronted by the consequences of his decisions shattered that illusion. So, now he’s turning the tables on the ghosts in a last-ditch effort to restore his fragile ego.
“The roles are reversed,” McNulty observed. “In ‘Christmas Carol,’ it's the spirits taking Scrooge on that journey. It's the spirits controlling him and manipulating him. In this iteration it's Scrooge really putting pressure on the spirits. It's Scrooge really putting them through a kind of journey and forcing them to defend themselves. So, the dynamics are different, but they're no less satisfying.”
While it’s the ghosts who are the defendants in the case, it’s actually Scrooge who’s on trial in this Mark Brown comedy. The spirits of Christmas may be under indictment, but it’s Scrooge’s soul that hangs in the balance.
“The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge" is onstage at Florida Rep through Dec. 21.
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This delightful and zany holiday comedy by Mark Brown (“Around the World in 80 Days”) takes place a year after Ebeneezer Scrooge’s miraculous transformation. The story is set in a courtroom where Scrooge is suing Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future in tort for damages resulting from breaking and entering, kidnapping, slander, pain and suffering, attempted murder and the intentional infliction of emotional distress. As the story unfolds, the plot takes a surprising twist unleashing a series of events filled with laughs, heart, nostalgic flashbacks to the original Dickens holiday classic, poignant life lessons, holiday mirth and plenty of comedy.
McNulty is intimately familiar with his character.
“I've played Scrooge in two other productions,” McNulty said. “Well, the earliest one was an annually recurring production at a large regional theater. I played Scrooge in that a dozen times. And then here at Florida Rep, a couple of seasons ago, I was in something called Sherlock Carol, which is a mash-up of a Sherlock Holmes mystery and 'Christmas Carol,' sort of. In that one, I came back as a ghost to kind of inspire Sherlock to rediscover his Christmas spirit. So, this is my third Scrooge, and I'm beginning to worry about being typecast.”
Learning courtroom demeanor and decorum
This time around, it wasn’t enough for McNulty to reprise his character, he had to learn courtroom demeanor and decorum. That’s because Scrooge elects to prosecute the case against the ghosts himself.
“Scrooge feels perfectly capable of handling his own case,” McNulty disclosed. “Actually, he's pretty good at it, but the other thing is, he doesn't want to pay for a lawyer because he's back to being a miser.”
To prepare for that aspect of the role, McNulty watched a couple of courtroom dramas even though “The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge” is more of a comedy.
“I watched ‘Witness for the Prosecution’ because it's an English courtroom drama with great performances,” McNulty reported. “Charles Laughton is amazing. Marlene Dietrich is in it and so is Tyrone Power.”
“Witness for the Prosecution” is celebrated for its intricate plot, masterful direction by Billy Wilder, and standout performances by Charles Laughton and Marlene Dietrich. The film delves into themes of justice, deception, and complex human relationships within a gripping courtroom drama. Its twisty narrative and surprising ending are often praised for enhancing suspense and entertainment, marking it as a genre classic.
“That led me to think about 'Judgment at Nuremberg,' which is hysterically funny, of course,” said McNulty, tongue in cheek. “But it's a brilliant film, and as I'm working on this character, I'm thinking about Maximilian Schell, who was incredible as the defense attorney in ‘Judgment at Nuremberg.’ It is fantastic, such fantastic performances, so you pick up certain little behavioral things that you'd like to steal from Maximilian Schell or Spencer Tracy or any of the other people that were in that film.”
In ‘Judgment at Nuremberg,’ four German judges who served on the bench during the Nazi regime face a military tribunal to answer charges of crimes against humanity. Chief Justice Haywood (Spencer Tracy) hears evidence and testimony not only from lead defendant Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster) and his defense attorney Hans Rolfe (Maximilian Schell), but also from the widow of a Nazi general (Marlene Dietrich), an idealistic U.S. Army captain (William Shatner) and reluctant witness Irene Wallner (Judy Garland).
Scrooge an effective litigant
While films like “Witness for the Prosecution” and “Judgment at Nuremberg” helped McNulty prepare for the role, he credits Brown’s script with constituting Scrooge as a believable courtroom advocate.
“It's so cleverly written and organized that you begin to see things from Scrooge’s perspective,” McNulty acknowledged. “You come to see everything that the spirits did that night could be considered criminal and grounds for a civil suit. It seems ridiculous that a ghost would be accused of breaking and entering and kidnapping and all that, but he makes a very good case for it. I mean, I wouldn't want to be haunted by those spirits, either.”
The stakes are high
Normally, a plaintiff in a civil suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages. But where do ghosts come up with the money to satisfy a civil judgment?
“If he wins the case against them, is it a spoiler to say that they'll cease to exist?” McNulty asked. “So the stakes are very high. It's a good script. It keeps you guessing right till the end, and trying to decide how you would decide the case if you were the judge or on the jury. It combines drama and mystery.”
But the stakes are equally high for Scrooge. The ghosts made him confront his past and the decisions that led to him becoming the man he is today. By having him relive key moments from his past, they deprived him of the ability to rewrite the past to fit his self-image and attendant self-esteem. That construction, which psychologists call “imagery re-scripting,” had enabled Scrooge to indulge the fiction that he was a good and honest businessman surrounded by, well, this song from the Alan Menken/Lynn Ahrens musical sums it up best.
I hate people
Scavengers and sycophants and flatterers and fools
Pharisees and parasites and hypocrites and ghouls
Calculating swindlers, prevaricating frauds
Perpetrating evil as they roam the earth in hordes
Feeding on their fellow men
Reaping rich rewards
Contaminating everything they see
Corrupting honest me like me
Humbug! Poppycock! Balderdash! Bah!
I hate people! I hate people!
People are despicable creatures
Loathesome inexplicable creatures
Good-for-nothing kickable creatures
I hate people! I abhor them!
When I see the indolent classes
Sitting on their indolent asses
Gulping ale from indolent glasses
I hate people! I detest them! I deplore them!
Fools who have no money spend it
Get in debt then try to end it
Beg me on their knees befriend them
Knowing I have cash to lend them
Soft-hearted me! Hard-working me!
Clean-living, thrifty and kind as can be!
Situations like this are of interest to me
I hate people! I loathe people! I despise and abominate people!
Life is full of cretinous wretches
Earning what their sweatiness fetches
Empty minds whose pettiness stretches
Further than I can see
Little wonder I hate people
And I don't care if they hate me!
[Emphasis added]
Taking responsibility for past decisions is uncomfortable. It forces us to admit that we’ve made mistakes … that we alone are responsible for how we’ve turned out, for the person we’ve become. Blaming other people or circumstances allows us to avoid criticism or consequences. Fear of judgment, from ourselves as much as by others, can make us avoid taking responsibility altogether. It’s a defense mechanism that had enabled Scrooge to block out the memory of the role he played in driving away the woman he once loved and deflect the opprobrium people felt for the parsimonious skinflint that he had become.
“It's something that people can relate to, the idea of being taken back to a time in your life when you made a decision that sent you down a path that accounts for so much of what you are now,” McNulty observed.
It’s human nature to color our perception of life-changing events and decisions that have negatively impacted our lives in a way that lets us off the hook, that places the blame on other people or circumstances beyond our control.
“So many things that you are now, that you think is somebody else's fault, the situations and character traits that you think, well, you're not really responsible for, that just sort of happened to you, and then somebody takes you right back to that moment when you made a choice that affected the rest of your life and not always in a nice way, and you're shown that it was you. It was you that made that choice. It was you that determined your future. Well, that’s terrifying. And that's what happens to Scrooge.”
It happens to him in "A Christmas Carol," and it happens to him all over again in “The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge.”
“He's brought back to that moment when he fails to stop the woman he loved from leaving,” McNulty added. “And that creates a cascade of events that takes him to the miser, to the meanest man in London. He doesn't realize that it was that circumstance, it was that moment that took him to where he is now. It's very poignant. It's really intense, and he realizes that he still loves that woman. But there’s nothing he can do about it now.”
Satisfying ending
McNulty believes that people will find the denouement of “The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge” just as satisfying as the end of “A Christmas Carol.”
“If you're looking for Christmas spirit at this time of year, which most people are, you won't be disappointed,” McNulty surmised. “I think it resolves itself very nicely and with an appropriate kind of sentimentality that isn't saccharine.”
Of course, McNulty added, “The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge” is, at heart, a comedy rather than a psychodrama.
But it’s a comedy with heart and soul. It delivers the implicit message that positive change can only come from taking responsibility for our past decisions and actions at a time when many seem inclined to rewrite history in a way that erases the acts, events and decisions that have combined to form our current social, economic and political reality.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
