Niagara-on-the-Lake in December is a storybook town. Its lantern-lit streets fill with pedestrians who bustle past shop windows traced with frost and, frequently, find their way to the Shaw Festival for some holiday theatre. It’s fitting that both titles anchoring the Shaw’s 2025 holiday season wear “Christmas” on their sleeves – and that, in a year when we sorely need more care for one another, both trace the transformation of their protagonists by the magic of the season.
These perennial favorites, burnished over multiple seasons, are not shiny new baubles. Yet like the holiday season itself, they are eminently worth pausing for: to marvel, to remember, and to be transformed — even just a little.
A Christmas Carol
Dickens’ classic tale spans one long, haunted Christmas Eve, when the miser Scrooge is visited by three spirits who reveal the consequences of his cruel past choices, and rekindle the possibility of his redemption.
Shaw’s production remains one of the most imaginative renditions of this show you will ever see— a magical, mysterious and genuinely spooky delight. And it is the final show that will play in the cozy historic confines of the Royal George Theatre – which has reached the end of its life, and is about to meet its transformation.
For starters, despite the picturesque environs, the show takes no Christmas spirit for granted. Before the show starts, the anachronistically garbed cast mill through the theatre and engage us in small talk, silliness and a seasonal singalong — deliberately transitioning us from our individual worlds of care into the participatory experience to come. Rachel O’Brien’s music direction repeats the alchemy after intermission, ushering us back in a different, yet exquisitely musical way.
Artistic Director Tim Carroll adapts and directs the play with a conjurer’s confidence, shaping Dickens’ tale into a brisk and surprising, yet seamless ritual of reckoning and delight. Sanjay Talwar’s Ebenezer Scrooge is the evening’s tuning fork: flint-edged in the opening passages, his fear is precise rather than blustery, and his thaw arrives in tiny, credible calibrations—an intake of breath here, a cracked smile there—until his final burst of generosity feels luminous, rather than merely sentimental.
And the visiting spirits and the visions they bring — ah, these are the truest treat. Each surprises through its unique blend of acting, puppetry, shadowplay, circuslike elements, and even magic. Alexis Milligan’s movement and puppetry provide a delicious frisson—Jacob Marley and the final spirit materialize and move around with impossibly massive, handcrafted strangeness that is equal parts folklore, dream logic, and fear. Gabriella Sundar Singh’s Ghost of Christmas Past literally swings into the scene with a lovely, unhurried and otherworldly clarity, her gentleness edged with the authority of memory. Meanwhile, Kristopher Bowman’s Ghost of Christmas Present delights in a silly yet touching enactment of what it would actually mean to be the spirit of an evanescent, always-slipping-away Present.
Meanwhile, Travis Seetoo’s Bob Cratchit is all unassuming decency (the kind of goodness that makes the play’s stakes legible), and Katie Ryerson’s Mrs. Cratchit balances pride and pragmatism with a lovely, lived-in grace. And the ensemble—Allison Edwards-Crewe, Marlene Ginader, Patty Jamieson, Gryphyn Karimloo, Graeme Somerville, Jacqueline Thair, and Jay Turvey—laces the evening with vivid cameos that feel at once like faces in Scrooge’s mind and the city’s crowd.
The final unique delight is the way Christine Lohre’s set-and-costume design makes tactile the ideas of memory and the moral consequences of action. For instance, the furniture in Scrooge’s office and the snow outside are memorably brought to life by the actors themselves – in ways that provide surprising (there’s that word again!) and touching markers for Scrooge’s transformation.
In short, A Christmas Carol is exquisite: you can sense that Carroll, his creative team and cast have mapped the story’s temperature change beat by beat, and the payoff is a finale that feels earned, exhilarating, warm, magical – and most worthy of song.
Irving Berlin’s White Christmas
In this classic 1950s musical, two WWII buddies-turned-showmen meet an attractive sister act, decamp to Vermont with them, muster a musical miracle to save an inn owned by their former commanding officer … and discover a few personal miracles along the way.
Shaw’s production at the larger Festival Theatre goes down smooth and cool – like a glass of perfectly spiced eggnog sipped in an armchair beside a twinkling tree and crackling fire. Slick and sexy, it provides a modern high-def immersion into a bygone era. Director Kate Hennig leans into period sparkle, while keeping the pace contemporary-crisp. Judith Bowden’s sets and costumes are superb and stylish, marked by telegraphic scene changes, ice-rink blues and candy-cane reds, and satin lapels that catch the footlights just so. Paul Sportelli’s music direction makes Irving Berlin’s immortal melodies ring with fresh clarity, and Allison Plamondon’s choreography delivers tap-and-lift sequences that exhilarate with their ‘wow’ factor, without ever feeling dutifully retro. And Kevin Lamotte’s lighting sculpts the stage like a snow globe shaken into gleam.
Jeff Irving makes an ideal Bob Wallace: his crooner’s warmth is unshowy and persuasive, with “White Christmas” landing not as nostalgia, but as a confidant’s promise. His deadpan timing keeps the banter crisp, and when he sets the ensemble moving in dance number “Blue Skies,” the room’s energy spikes. And Kevin McLachlan’s Phil Davis, his partner-in-crime, is kinetic and irresistible, delivering buoyant tap, flirtatious brio, and a devil-may-care grin that never tips into smarm. The duo’s opposite numbers are equally enchanting. Mary Antonini’s Judy Haynes is a sparkplug of charm, her dance breaks bristling with precision and play. Meanwhile, Camille Eanga-Selenge’s Betty Haynes shapes Berlin’s long lines with a gleaming top and smoky centre: her “Love, You Didn’t Do Right By Me” is a silk-wrapped dagger.
The rest of the cast is universally excellent. To note just two… Jenni Burke’s Martha Watson is a stealth engine of delight— delivering vaudeville snap, maternal steel, and a belting voice that buttons scenes with comic aim. And David Keeley’s General Waverley supplies the show’s moral ballast: weathered dignity, army commander / befuddled civilian presence, and a community focus that turns the final musical miracle into an earned act of care.
The ensemble numbers land with Broadway breadth and polish, while the quieter scenes let the season’s ache—nostalgia, longing, kindness—surface with sincerity. White Christmas razzles. It dazzles. It frazzles … but only just long enough to sweeten its substantial seasonal payoff.
Choosing … to be transformed
Both Shaw Festival productions conclude on December 21, 2025, and together they form a resonant diptych: A Christmas Carol stares into winter’s darkest night and insists on light, while White Christmas wraps that light in satin and song to keep the darkness out.
In a world crowded with content that relentlessly demands our attention, this one‑two punch argues for occasions over distractions. Art like this doesn’t merely entertain: it reheats our courage to change and our appetite to celebrate. And in this place that looks like a picture book, Shaw’s sharply honed A Christmas Carol and White Christmas remind us that the real magic of transformation is readily available to us—if we choose to turn the page.
With performances until December 21, 2025, A Christmas Carol closes out the storied history of the Royal George Theatre, and White Christmas runs at the Festival Theatre. For showtimes and tickets, please see shawfest.com.
© Scott Sneddon, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2025
