Not quite, but the High Point Central High School theater club has taken Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” and infused it with a detective story and humor to create its own holiday masterpiece.
Tonight is the third and final performance of “A Christmas Noir.” The Central theater club spent nearly three months on the show, writing, rehearsing and building sets.
“It’s a great performance. It’s funny. It’s cute,” said Christina Caltagirone, Central’s theater teacher.
The play is like the familiar tale, but with several twists: Bob Cratchit is a girl, and Scrooge has hired a detective to find his missing briefcase full of cash. Oh, and there’s no Tiny Tim.
The actors-writers admit they were worried about how that last detail would go over.
“We didn’t want to write him out, but it made it complicated,” said Leslie Ann Blake, who plays Miss Cratchit.
Her fellow actors began to laugh. “Even more complicated,” she added.
Caltagirone likes having the students rewrite classic productions. Last spring, they revamped “Cinderella” with a 1980s soundtrack and set it in an all-girls school.
“It gives them such a sense of ownership, and I think that’s important,” Caltagirone said. “Plus it gets kids who wouldn’t normally work together to work together.”
Several cast members were on the writing team. Gabrielle Smith, a sophomore, said that as the team reworked the original script, there were plenty of arguments about what to keep and what to toss.
The scripting process even introduced the original story to some students. David McDonald, who plays Scrooge, had never read or seen “A Christmas Carol.”
“He was under a rock before this,” Smith joked.
Thomas Gooding, a sophomore, plays “Ace,” the detective Scrooge hires to find his missing cash. Ace joins Scrooge as the curmudgeon is visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future. Through the process, Ace learns he’s on the same terrible path Scrooge has made for himself.
For added measure, Ace is torn between two women and tormented by the memory of the worst prom date ever.
For Gooding, a veteran of community theater, playing Ace meant finding humor in a humorless character.
“He says a lot of things that he thinks are smart, but they really don’t make sense,” Gooding said.
Caltagirone said the play is the best she’s seen this group of students put together.
Although there is no Tiny Tim, the teens say the spirit of the play is clear.
“Don’t be so self-centered,” Gooding said. “Money is important, but it’s not everything. People are more important.”