Broadway Review: A one-man ‘Christmas Carol’ that’s genuinely spooky

“A Christmas Carol” had barely got going the other night when an almighty bang emanated from the sound board, enough to scare Jacob Marley all the way back down to hell, chains and all.

A small child was seated down the row from me, doubtless on the expectation that this seasonal Broadway attraction would offer some cheery Dickensian charm, a few spirited scenes of grinchiness, rapidly subsumed by redemption and a willingness to purchase turkeys for all of London town.

Since this is a one-man version of “A Christmas Carol,” as performed by Jefferson Mays, fresh from playing an Iowa mayor in “The Music Man,” the kid’s parents probably also expected a kind of cheery tour-de-force, featuring many characters (”more than 50″ trumpet the ads) with distinctively humorous voices and costumes and all of the jolly stuff that folks often seek out at this time of this year.

But that’s not at all what this genuinely tense and spooky “Christmas Carol,” previously seen in Los Angeles, actually delivers. We are, for the most part, very much in the dark, as if the power had gone out in the Nederlander Theater, once the home of “Rent.” And at that first bang, the kid in question at my performance let out a blood-curdling wail that served as an apt undercurrent for at least the first 10 minutes of the 90-minute show.

A cautionary tale for families with young kids: Christmas Eve nightmares may be caused.

Fair enough. Dickens’ ghost story is a seriously intended affair, filled as it is with dire consequences of financiers failing to realize that “mankind is your business” and its focus on how selfish mistakes made when we were young can and so often do result in loneliness and despair as we age.

This isn’t The Rockettes and tin soldiers, it’s the story of a longtime rich fool confronting his own mortality. Heaven knows, this version taps into that part of the story’s heritage. The final scene is not Mays cradling Tiny Tim or dancing a gavotte at his nephew Fred’s place, but visiting a graveyard, presumably with a better path in mind for the days after his miserly body rots in the soil of old London town.

Mercifully, though, Dickens believed in the possibility of redemption — the reformed Scrooge, traditionally, is a big part of why so many people want to experience this story every Christmas. Many Scrooges of my acquaintance over the years have fast-forwarded to this happy part. Not so Mays, who clearly relishes the existential demands of the character in motion.

Mays, of course, is a superb actor — as honest as Bob Cratchit, as direct as the Ghost of Christmas Past, as unflinching as the spirt with the specters of the future. I first saw him in “Miss Julie” nearly 30 years ago in Kentucky and I’ve been a fan ever since. He tends to every individual moment and he’s both an ebullient character actor and cypher-like, where needed. Best of all, he has skin in every game he plays, crucial for this particular assignment.

That said, much of this version of “A Christmas Carol” (adapted by Mays, Susan Lyons and Michael Arden, who also directs) is heavy on narration, which makes you wonder whether this show would have worked just as well, and maybe even better, if Mays had stuck to Scrooge and storytelling and joined with two or three other actors, “Lehman Trilogy” style, allowing us to maybe see some of the crowd scenes that here are mostly rendered via creepy video footage. (One other actor, Danny Gardner, is part of the ghostly presence, albeit with face unseen.)

The noir-like design for the show by Dane Laffrey, though, is really something, and its sudden visual tricks and life-affirming pleasures far exceed what most people would expect from a one-person show. Joshua D. Reid’s sound offers as visceral and riveting a sonic affair as any show currently on Broadway.

Nothing wrong with a good shudder at the holidays. Gets you in practice for the new year.