Review: A Halloween Carol
Audience members, you….the masks you wear are not few….the question, though, that’s pondered here is whether you'll remove yours to become most true.
An Immersive Scene Los Angeles Review
If you’re going to take on the challenge of reinterpreting a classic, you’d better be up for the task. Mission accomplished here in Lawrence Meyers’ riveting one-hour interactive theatre production. The original text has been honored yet fully reimagined in a remarkable, thoughtful, and, at times, quite spooky immersive production. It’s a 2026 wow experience for lovers of intimate theatre, and belongs on your to-do itinerary if you’re craving deeper, yet thoroughly entertaining content.
A Halloween Carol, currently inhabiting The Count’s Den, downtown, poses the question: what masks do we wear in life, and, ultimately, do they weigh us down, keeping us from being the real people we were meant to be? In the inspiration for this season-shifting tale, the heavy chains of misdeeds have been switched out for the masks that all men and women hide behind at times, and the audience stands in for Ebenezer as the one who needs some serious looking in the mirror.
Enter a place that feels familiar, Scrooge’s counting house, but here you’re not necessarily in London, or anywhere specific really, other than a purgatory, if you will, set-dressed as the place the miser spent his days counting the cash. You won’t find the skinflint here or anywhere during the 45-minute follow-along, but you will be shockingly visited by his still very dead-as-a-doornail business partner, Jacob Marley. “Do you know me?” the ghostly apparition inquires. Marley (Mike Whittier) has been sent to you, just as he was to his former partner, but a few calendar months earlier than usual, as a final warning: you’d better stop wearing those false masks in life that humans fearfully hide behind and find the real you. And do so before it’s too late or you’ll face the final forge where your permanent mask will be placed on you for eternal damnation.
Thus begins your journey on Halloween night where you’ll visit at least three re-seasoned spirits during the spooky tale. Each will show you shades of your own life – past, present, and future - by gently coaxing from you memories that perhaps reflect some of your own masks. First, there is the little ghost girl, Dahlia (Zoe Kasch), with a wisdom beyond her years, who invites you to play trick or treat in her haunted bedroom. After a chilling encounter there, you are handed over to a welcoming second Ghost of Halloween Past (Rori Flynn), who at first regales you with her love of Halloween and wants to know your best memories of the holiday. As you sit with her in a Victorian parlor, sipping cider, the questions somehow reach a deeper level, ending on the theme of masks – not the ones we wear when trick or treating, but the ones we put on in life, and sometimes feel trapped by.
You’re then taken to see a representation of that through the character known simply as Father (Lawrence Meyers), a worn-down man who has spent his whole life trying to hold it together for family, while trying to figure it all out. You may see even shades of yourself in him. The next spirit you visit, The Ghost of Halloween Present (Brynn Douchette), is one we all know well in our digitized, overly-exposed era of self-absorption: the influencer/podcaster. “Come in and know me!” she enthuses when you step into the glaring lights of her studio. You’ve somehow become a guest on her live show live, being interviewed about not only Halloween but about yourself too. After the cameras stop for commercial break (got to pay the sponsors), she reveals to you the anguish of never being able to take off her mask of always “being on.” The bright lights of her studio, however, have revealed a deeply conflicted spirit.
Then you are whisked to the future, now in the presence of the haunting Ghost of Halloween Future (Samantha Aotaki), a mysterious figure who at first only communicates through a graveyard dance and later through words of importance for your salvation. Your final visit is to a quasi-hell where the representation of death itself, the Mask Maker (Aaron Fors) has been shaping your mask for many years over his anvil. If you’ve been paying attention, for the past 50-minutes or so, you may have learned enough to avoid wearing that permanent false face. If you haven’t, you’re doomed much like Jacob Marley who started you on the perilous path earlier that night.
Creator Lawrence Meyers has given us something quite special this Halloween season, a remarkable show that is at once thoughtful, intelligent and thoroughly entertaining, There’s no dumbing down here for quick reactions, scares, or even laughs, there’s only a deeply wrought story that frees you to enjoy the involving narrative and maybe learn a few things about yourself along the way. The show will not force you out of your comfort zone, but it will get the wheels in your head spinning while providing a great story in which you’re both a witness to and a participant in.
Meyers’ writing is next level, and while he certainly uses Dickens’ words as his jumping off point, the text is nearly all his, somehow suitable for the ear of a Dickens’ acolyte but completely original in its creation. Some of the language is quite beautiful and classically lyrical, some very matter of fact contemporary– all of it moves the story forward and gives you insight into the characters’ psyches. Only two or three times in the entire show did I recognize an actual line from A Christmas Carol, and at all other times enjoyed listening to an original narrative. One of the most moving elements of all had nothing to do not with scripted words but came late in the play when the haunting melody of “Sycamore Trees’ was played while a gut-wrenching emotional dance was performed under it.
It’s shaping up to be a season of intimate shows with stellar casts, and this one is one of the best ensembles yet. Meyers has put together a collective of gifted performers who aren’t merely acting; they are sharing, involving, including you in their work while all the while performing. It’s an intimately involving up-close experience that can be enhanced exponentially by your participation in it.
We enjoyed all in the show equally, and each reveals the full depths of their characters, but special recognition must be accorded Aotaki and Fors for performing their scenes outdoors with all of the associated urban distractions like car noise, helicopters flying overhead, and city apartments overlooking them, yet never letting it affect their riveting performances. The entire cast – indoor or out – will make your night very special.
And you’re a big part of this as well.
It’s immersive at the deepest levels, because your contribution isn’t frivolous or trite but meaningful, especially because the actors are listening to you, not just reacting to you. It’s a fascinating back and forth that works well in this narrative. Their questions are never invasive but invite as much depth and discussion as you are willing to bring to what will amount to a never-to-be-the-same-show again experience. The one or two guests’ unique responses are what assure its singular nature.
Speaking of which, although you can certainly do this show alone, I highly suggest you go through it as a duo, because it adds so much to the possibilities. I lucked upon another guest who arrived just a few minutes before me, and we experienced A Halloween Carol together, and it was wonderful. The nice thing about having a second is that you can enjoy partaking in the interactive aspects while also watching another person doing the same. If you’d like to be paired up with someone, a short note to the creative team will likely help make that happen. If you do see it as a solo, let us know how the experience played out that way. I have no doubt the gifted cast has solutions for all scenarios, even for guests that don’t necessarily want to explore their improvised roles too deeply.
Tech elements enhance this fluid show across its several spaces. Lighting and sound are superb, defining each space effectively to eyes and ears. The dimly lit bedroom, the festively illuminated parlor, and the glaring lights of the TV studio each do their job thoroughly, sometimes just a few feet away from each other. Sound, from the crows in the cornfield to the inevitable clock chimes on the hour (every ten minutes or so in show time), adds an eerie level of depth that could have been overlooked but thankfully wasn’t. The incredibly moving audio highlight is the heartbreaking music of Jimmy Scott’s “Sycamore Trees” played and danced to under one.
Set design by Rachel Adams as well is equally imaginative – from the counting house to the farm field to that amazing podcast studio to the outdoor graveyard and forge. The spaces are distinct from each other yet flow organically together through placement and a bit of theatrical subterfuge. The space itself, the Count’s Den, once again proves a flexible and winning environment for a follow-along immersive.
As an avowed Dickens fan – his house in London was on my to visit-list before I even thought about the Tower, Harrods, or Buckingham Palace – I’m a bit protective of seeing his work remade into new forms. This is one I loved, and I think he would too. Maybe we’ll ask Jacob Marley the next time he appears somewhere.
By Thom Mills for Immersive Scene Los Angeles
at the Count's Den
1039 South Olive Street
Los Angeles, CA 90015
Tickets: $75.00
