“Marley was dead: to begin with,” goes the first line of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol (1843). It could actually read “Scrooge was dead, to begin with,” because Ebenezer Scrooge, the protagonist of the tale, is dead inside. Most of us have at some point seen a stage production of A Christmas Carol. But this production, directed by Michael Arden, takes a page from Dickens himself, who was known to perform A Christmas Carol as a one-man show. Here we have the virtuosic Jefferson Mays. “We are aiming for making something that you’ve really never seen before,” says Dane Laffrey, the show’s scenic and costume designer. “We need to be as scared as Scooge is,” says Arden, “so that we fully are open to the idea of ghosts and spirits and change. And change is scary.” In his acclaimed performance, and playing over 50 roles, Mays brings Scrooge back from death, into the light. —Laura Jacobs