How does one keep a story that is familiar to everyone fresh? This was the challenge faced by Manual Cinema when they decided to perform Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol." MC took multiple approaches to this challenge. First, they adapted the story as a puppet show, featuring primarily cardboard stick puppets and silhouettes. Second, they projected the puppet show onto a screen above the stage, converting it into a real-time movie. Finally, the woman performing the puppet show was a bitter workaholic who hated Christmas. As the puppet show progressed, Ebenezer Scrooge's story became her story.

LaKecia Harris was brilliant as the puppeteer Trudy. Her character shifts from the cynical widow at the show's start to the confrontation of her fears as she imagines spirits during a severe thunderstorm and her epiphany as she learns similar lessons taught Scrooge by Dickens's Christmas ghosts.

Wednesday evening's performance was not as complex as MC's interpretation of "Frankenstein" that I saw earlier this year.
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But it was as clever and delightful.