Lucky He

“A Christmas Carol”
Finnish National Ballet
Opera House
Helsinki, Finland
December 2024 (video)

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2024 by Ilona Landgraf

Last Christmas, I missed the Finnish National Ballet’s new A Christmas Carol on arte.tv. Luckily, the channel rescheduled the recording for this December. David Bintley, the Birmingham Royal Ballet’s former director, choreographed the two-act production and was the first to adapt Charles Dickens’s novella about the chronically ill-tempered miser, Scrooge, for the ballet stage.

In Act I, Bintley introduces the old merchant, Scrooge (Johan Pakkanen), who hates people in general and Christmas in particular, along with his antitheses, Fred (Jun Xia) and Bob Cratchit (Frans Valkama). Both are family men but represent different social classes. Fred, Scrooge’s nephew, is well-off and in the most buoyant of Christmas moods when he invites his uncle for Christmas (he’s, of course, immediately rebuffed). Bob, Scrooge’s conscientious but underpaid clerk, feeds his family of six on a limited budget. He, too, is happy and generous by nature but worries about the serious illness of his youngest son, Tiny Tim (Janne Kouhia).

Scrooge’s soul seemed incurably corrupt, but heaven granted him one last chance to repent and improve himself. To convert the inveterate sociopath, Scrooge was first presented with the horrors (which would weaken his obstinacy) and then subjected to contrasting grief and compassion. The first task was carried out by the ghost of Scrooge’s late affiliate, Marley (Sergei Popov). Although weightless, he possessed a surprisingly ironclad grip, which he used on Scrooge while warning: “Do some soul-searching—or else!” The squad of pathetic ghosts that accompanied Marley—including the destitute mother with the baby who Scrooge had chased away some hours earlier—made the old niggard hide behind the thick curtains of his canopy bed.
After all, he was a coward. But the Spirit of Christmas Past (Zhiyao Chen, who wore a bridal gown-like outfit) lured him out. One leaf of her magic laurel branch transported Scrooge’s mind to past events of his life. He encountered his younger self at the boarding school where he was the only boy who wasn’t fetched by his parents at the end of term. Instead, he sought refuge in his children’s book whose heroes—Robinson Crusoe with a flapping green parrot on his shoulder, Don Quixote (a quite agile version), and, I guess, the Lion of Punjab—came alive until the teacher’s rod put an end to the escapist fantasy.

A second bay leaf fast-forwarded old Scrooge to the buzzing party of his first employer, the jovial Mr.Fezziwig, where Scrooge watched himself as a dashing young man (Martin Nudo) sweetly in love with the beautiful Belle (Abigail Sheppard). They would have been a perfect couple! But Belle took umbrage at Scrooge’s business practices and, after a dramatic emotional struggle, broke the engagement. At this point, the heart of old Scrooge was about to melt. Yet there was more in store.

In Act II, Father Christmas, alias the Spirit of Christmas Present (Samuli Poutanen), atop a mountain of presents and delicacies, allowed Scrooge a glance into the Cratchits’ home. Their Christmas party was far from luxurious but cheerful and warmhearted. None of the four children saw the tears of Mamma Cratchit (Rebecca King) falling over her ill son. After an intermezzo at a lively market (where the mists of the Spirit’s cornucopia effected peace and harmony), Scrooge watched the jaunty dancing and Hoodman’s Blind at Fred’s Christmas party. He wasn’t happy though when the guests acted out an unsavory imitation of him. Neither did he like that Fred’s two well-bred children had turned into a begging brat and greedy young bastard who suddenly reached out to him from under the green coat of the Spirit of Christmas Present.

The Spirit of Christmas Yet To Come (Florian Modan), a black-hooded grim reaper who threateningly spread his claws, delivered Scrooge the final straw. He showed Scrooge his funeral (the four attachable wheels that turned his former canopy bed into a funeral carriage reminded me of Cinderella, except that her journey was fortunate), which was attended by his boozy domestic staff who misused his coffin as a podium for their cocky jumping about. Only the Cratchits mourned his death wholeheartedly. When the undertaker opened the coffin’s window and Scrooge stared at the screaming mouth of his corpse, his conversion was complete.

Upon waking up the next morning and finding himself well and alive, Scrooge praised the Lord. Jolly and glad, he danced about, turned a cartwheel, and thrust not one, but two, coins into the hand of his bewildered charwoman. He rushed to the Cratchits to present them a whopping turkey and then to Fred and his wife’s (Hanako Matsune’s) abode to take to the floor. His stooped back had straightened, his wrinkles were smoothed, and his eyes beamed. He made peace with his lonely inner child and retrospectively reunited the young Scrooge with Belle and finally joined the town’s folk’s chorus of Hark! The Heralds Angels Sing. Everyone seemed to welcome his transformation.
Tiny Tim, meanwhile healthy, was the last to appear. As when he was at his family’s table, he again shouted the Christmas greeting, “God bless us, everyone!”

Bintley’s protagonists have complex characters that, when clashing with one another, often highlight the others’ peculiarities. The morale he imparts is serious but told with a wink. An abundance of folk and social dances on the Christmas market and at families’ homes conveys a holiday mood.
Christmas tunes are also part of the score composed by the Brit Sally Beamish. The rich tapestry of sounds (played by the Finnish National Opera Orchestra under the baton of Paul Murphy) includes jingle bells, bagpipe music, on-stage violin (by Sophia Miettunen), and a percussion interlude played with cutlery.
Anna Fleischle’s restrained set design allows smooth time travel and transitions between the scenes. She reserved color mainly for the costumes, which aptly represent the fashion of the period.

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