A Christmas Carol gone rogue — or rouge

This review by longtime Charlotte arts critic Lawrence Toppman was published by The Charlotte Ledger on December 8, 2025. You can find out more about The Charlotte Ledger’s commitment to smart local news and information and sign up for our newsletter for free here. Ledger subscribers can add the Toppman on the Arts newsletter on their “My Account” page.

by Lawrence Toppman

Christmas isn’t a holiday I associate with resurrection, but that’s what’s going on at Warehouse Performing Arts Center in Cornelius. The facility, beefed up from 55 to 80 seats (including stage-side tables) and smelling of fresh paint on the opening night of “Scrooge in Rouge,” has reawakened this month with the inaugural production by Warehouse Studio Theatre.

The cheerfully cheeky musical offers a series of twists and non-stop jokes — some hoary, some hip — that subvert “A Christmas Carol” yet put Charles Dickens’ basic plot and message across. Three actors and a stalwart pianist leave us groaning and laughing as they vex the halls with bows unholy. Didn’t like that pun? This review and perhaps the show itself aren’t for you.

I was in an especially cheerful mood Friday, returning to an intimate facility I’d visited pre-pandemic but have not keep up with in recent years. (The usual excuses: Too far from Charlotte, nowhere to eat nearby except one fried chicken joint, irregular production schedule.)

So perhaps I was especially receptive to a goofy show billed as having “book and lyrics by Ricky Graham, additional materials by Jeffrey Roberson, other interesting bits by Yvette Hargis, original music composed by Jefferson Turner.” I’m not sure who’d take credit for jokes that can probably be found in Babylonic cuneiform:

“It’s a henway.”

“What’s a henway?”

“Oh, two or three pounds.”

Ba-DUM. It’s hard to do rim shots on an upright piano, so adroit music director/pianist Lois Buesser lets this stuff pass without keyboard commentary.

We’re told a British music hall company in Victorian times — Dickens’ era, more or less — has mostly been laid low by food poisoning, leaving just three members to perform the show: Miss Lottie Obbligato (Matt Kenyon), Mr. Charlie Schmaltz (Nonya Obichere), and Miss Vesta Virile (Reneé Welsh Noel, who choreographed the brief dance sections). Fair warning to those of you sitting in the front row: There’s a bit of audience participation, too.

We have a man playing a woman playing both female and male roles, a woman playing a man playing both male and female roles, and a woman playing a woman who generally takes the male role of Scrooge. While the mind’s boggling, one can appreciate Obichere’s ability to change characters and costumes at top speed, Kenyon’s assured work in drag, and Noel’s grounded performance as Scrooge, a voice of curmudgeonly sanity among the mad goings-on. Director Jessica Zingher keeps all this spinning along as quickly as it can go.

Jokes can be corny and crusty: “My family is in iron and steel.” “Yeah, your mother irons and your father steals.” Yet they can also be clever and fresh: A character describes Scrooge as “so mean he’d send a Mother’s Day card to an orphan, so tight that fortune-tellers have to read his knuckles.” Double-entendres, some witty and some as subtle as a heavy metal band playing “Silent Night,” flow constantly through the dialogue.

And yet the familiar story gets told. We hear iconic lines in the dead Marley’s warning to Scrooge, in the miser’s belief that the poor ought to die “to decrease the surplus population,” in the scene where Scrooge’s employees rob the dying man of his possessions. The unscary Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is more of a green romper than a grim reaper — kind of a pickle with a sickle — who still conveys the message that Scrooge is headed for an unattended grave, unless he changes his attitude.

Many of us will be content this December and every December with “The Nutcracker,” symphony pops concerts and the traditional “A Christmas Carol,” in which God blesses us, every one. “Scrooge in Rouge” doesn’t supplant those chestnuts; it supplements them, reminding us that joy in this season comes in many forms.

“Scrooge in Rouge” runs through Dec. 20 at Warehouse PAC, 9216 Westmoreland Road, Cornelius. Shows are at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays.

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Lawrence Toppman covered the arts for 40 years at The Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2020. Now, he’s back in the critic’s chair for the Charlotte Ledger — look for his reviews several times each month in the Charlotte Ledger.

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