Black as Coal
During the treacly month of December, when we can’t swing a blackjack without hitting a cast member of the Nutcracker, we cried tears of gratitude upon reading a notice for the bi-coastal debut of The Lump of Coal, a play based on Lemony Snicket’s 2008 children’s book. Adapted for stage by the formidable Norman Allen — who won a Helen Hayes Award for Nijinsky’s Last Dance and a Charles MacArthur Award for In the Garden — the story follows a little fellow who, “like many people who dress in black,” wants to be an artist. Evading winter puddles, the lump of coal makes his way into an art gallery, a Korean barbecue, and, finally, into the hands of a drugstore St. Nick — all of which confirm that the world is overburdened by artifice and conceit. Finally the charcoal lands in the stocking of a misunderstood youth, with whom he is able to make art and eat delicious pickled cabbage. As Snicket writes at the beginning of his heartwarming holiday tale, “Miracles are like pimples, because once you start looking for them you find more than you ever dreamed you’d see.”
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