Streaming Musicals’s new holiday offering Estella Scrooge goes even further into stage-video hybrid territory with truly dazzling special effects—Tyler Milliron is listed as director of photography and editor, and Zach Wilson is credited with production art design. Subtitled “A Christmas Carol with a Twist,” this update on the immortal Christmas tale of a miser’s reclamation through the intercession of three spirits is a visual treat and chock-a-block with cuddly good intentions but feels forced and phony. The book by John Caird and Paul Gordon, who also is responsible for the mixed bag of songs, not only updates the story but throws in every Dickens reference you could possibly imagine.
In this modern retelling, corporate shark Estella Scrooge is CEO of Bleak House (get it?), which is not only a subprime mortgage lender but also a health insurance provider. This way Estella not only throws people out of their houses, but she kicks them off the medical rolls as well. On Christmas Eve, she travels in person to foreclose on a charity hotel run by her former love, the altruistic Pip Nickleby (two Dickens heroes in one—Pip from “Great Expectations” and the title hero from “Nicholas Nickleby”) and populated by a motel crew of lovable misfits, each named for a Dickens character from a different novel. Naturally, Estella is visited by a brace of ghosts, each with a specialty number, and she reforms on Christmas morning. But not before sharing lengthly, tedious duets with Pip between each spectral visit.
The cutsie-pie Dickens bits and the groan-worthy jokes are made bearable by a Broadway-caliber cast stuffed with Tony nominees. Betsy Wolfe conquers the cliches of Wall Street avarice for a multilayered Estella, and Clifton Duncan pushes back tons of treacly dreck to create a believable Pip. Lauren Patten and Em Grosland are endearingly offbeat as a pair of hotel urchins. The reliably professional Carolee Carmello, Danny Burstein, and Patrick Page endow their ghostly roles with heft, while Sarah Litzsinger is particularly captivating as a punk rock version of the Ghost of Christmas Past.
Caird, who also directs, transports us to a variety of magical settings via the imaginative visuals. You are left admiring the technical skills on display but grumbling “Humbug” for having to sit through a mawkish retread.
