The Ghosts of Christmas Past seems to have had a fraught (though brief) history. It was intended (as a full production) to be Archive’s winter show when they announced their 2023 season, but in the middle of October it was cancelled due to a lack of “spirit/force/resources” and actors. Then three weeks later, the show was re-announced as a staged reading for one weekend only.

In true Archive fashion, of course, the actors were still costumed, the set was designed and dressed, and live musicians underscored the performance. Most of these elements were fine and I don’t have much to comment on, as I think they were mostly meant to set the scene and be pretty to look at while the actors read their…interesting tales.

The program gave no indication on whether the ghost stories told this weekend have their basis in literature, folklore, or whether they are entirely the brainchildren of the authors (Jennifer Rose Davis, Lynn Schaffer Beaver, Adriana Fontánez). The five family members in the cast banter a bit, reference “the most famous Christmas ghost story” (A Christmas Carol, not Jesus), and then the bulk of the night is taken up by two main stories, neither of which were particularly scary. The evening finishes with standoff between Krampus and Saint Nicholas to send the audience off with a laugh.

The first story lacks a ghost at all, and really just involves a creepy doll and a man that loves her maybe a little bit too much. I imagined several sinister outcomes as the story progressed, but it ended anticlimactically and with no closure. Is the doll haunted? Is she protecting or harming the children who keep being injured in her presence? Why is the doll-maker so obsessed with her? All questions with no answers. I was confused more than spooked.

The story that takes up most of the second act is a little more involved, but no more polished than the doll story. In the middle of the story, the narration abruptly jumps from the point of view of the newcomers to the old haunted mansion (Americans!) to the POV of the mansion’s ghost and his woes. POV-jumping isn’t a sin, but the story never went back to the original POV (so what was the point then?), and I think it would have worked better if the narrator had also changed when the POV did. The rest of the story does a lot of telling that simply seemed lazy on the part of the writers, and reminded me of stories I’ve read on fanfiction sites — not the content, but the way the plot would build to a dramatic reveal…and then another dramatic reveal…and then another dramatic reveal! Then when it finally comes down to the moral of the story, where the character with sympathy for the ghost claims to have been shown a new meaning of love…that’s literally all she says. Someone asks her what happened to her, and she just tells them she doesn’t want to talk about it. Did the creative juices run out, or perhaps was some of the script cut for time?

Ultimately, The Ghosts of Christmas Past is a good example of why new shows typically go through so many drafts, staged readings, more drafts, and previews before they fully open. Some staging elements ought to be re-worked; for example, the choice to make Texan actors attempt British accents. (The Victorian era also happened in the USA, you know.) The whole idea is a good one, but the script needs quite a bit of work before I would consider seeing (and paying for) it again next year, when Archive plans to stage a full production.

Photo: The Archive Theater via Facebook

The Ghosts of Christmas Past: A Staged Reading closes on December 3, 2023 at Pioneer Farms. For more information and tickets, visit The Archive Theater’s website here.