The New York Times - USA (2020-12-01)

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2020 C1

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NEWS CRITICISM

2 ART

Luxury items give auction

houses a lift. BY SCOTT REYBURN

5 TELEVISION

The American experience as

told in ‘Fargo.’ BY FINN COHEN

6 BOOK REVIEW

Beheading, flaying

and impaling: a

warlord just getting

started. BY DWIGHT GARNER

Back in March, Peggy Shaw and Lois

Weaver, of the theater duo Split Britches,

were in Britain, developing a new show,

when Covid-19 exploded. It made more

sense to stay put than to scamper back

home to New York, which looked pretty

scary at the time. Weaver, who has spent

part of the year in London for nearly two

decades, teaching performance at Queen

Mary University, had a shared place there,

but Shaw’s accommodations across town

were an issue.

Luckily, neighbors of Weaver’s volun-

teered an empty house they had been plan-

ning to gut-renovate.

“There was electricity, heat, running wa-

ter and one chair,” Weaver, 71, said, describ-

ing the London house in a recent video call

from the Catskills. Recounting the experi-

ence, she said friends and fellow theater-

makers had donated furniture, and some-

one who was moving to a nursing home

gave them kitchen equipment. “We got her

toaster, microwave, plates — which we

brought back to New York because we love

them so much,” Weaver said.

In that otherwise bare house, the two

women — “Peggy and I are an off-again-on-

again couple,” Weaver noted; their complic-

ity during the joint interview was obvious —

resumed work on “Last Gasp,” the new

show they were meant to perform at La

MaMa in New York in April and the Barbi-

can in London in June.

The dates ended up being canceled, like

all dates, but “Last Gasp WFH” (for Work-

ing From Home) was created and recorded

on Zoom. Weaver directed, and the two

women handled the sound and lighting

JINGYU LIN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A Project

Shaped

By These

Times

As Split Britches, Peggy Shaw

and Lois Weaver have made

off-kilter theater for 40 years.

‘Last Gasp WFH’ is a ‘Zoomie.’

CHARLES DICKENSknew how to sell “A
Christmas Carol.” For years, he even took it
on tour.
Consider his sold-out appearance, on
Dec. 9, 1867, at Steinway Hall on 14th Street
in Manhattan, where he kept the audience
rapt for 90 minutes as he read his 1843 no-

vella aloud. With a variety of voices, faces
he’d practiced in front of a mirror in Boston
and, as The New York Times reported, a
“free use of gesticulation,” he wowed the
crowd with the tale of greed and redemp-
tion.
Though Dickens did not have the benefit
of modern technology, just a customized
rostrum, the same handcrafted spirit is
summoned by the astonishing Jefferson

Mays in a live-capture “Christmas Carol”

stuffed with every trick and whiz-bang

available. He plays not only Scrooge, Tiny

Tim and various ghosts but also, in Michael

Arden’s riveting film rendering, “the dying

fire” and “an indignant potato.”

Yet however delightful it is to see Mays

nail, in just one look or intonation, the

essence of a vegetable knocking “loudly at

the saucepan-lid to be let out and peeled,” as

Dickens described that potato, this is not

just a tour de force. The production, based

on one Arden directed in 2018 for the Geffen

Playhouse in Los Angeles, aims to repro-

duce what the novelist clearly intended his

own readings to be: an opportunity to make

what was already a classic story feel new,

while also making it feel as if it should mat-

ter forever.

It should, and not just because the film,

streamable through Jan. 3, is vastly effec-

tive as spooky entertainment. (It may even

be too intense for some children.) Based on

Dickens’s touring version of the tale, itself

slightly altered from the printed text, this

“Christmas Carol” is the most fearsome I’ve

seen — I mean morally fearsome. It is thus

JESSE GREEN THEATER REVIEW

Jefferson Mays tells a story that is not merely about the miserliness of Scrooge, but, potentially, of all mankind.

VIA A CHRISTMAS CAROL LIVE

A Ham’s Holiday Classic, Minus the Honey Glaze

Jefferson Mays is the cast in a

pointed Dickens adaptation.

A Christmas Carol

At achristmascarollive.com.

CONTINUED ON PAGE C2

Peggy Shaw, far left, and Lois Weaver

near their Catskills home. They are

on-and-off personal partners, but a

professional pair for decades.

By ELISABETH VINCENTELLI

CONTINUED ON PAGE C6