 |
Photo By Heidi Jo Schiemer
|
CSF’s Nick Rose revisits A Christmas Carol from
Jacob Marley’s point of view.
|
Nick Rose admits he was something of a Scrooge about annual productions of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. "It's a staple in almost every city across America," says the actor, a long-time member of Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival's (CSF) acting company.
"It's done every year, and it's very popular. But after a while you almost wonder why you keep going. It's a cliché." Dickens, Rose notes, wrote A Christmas Carol in 1850 because he felt Christmas was being taken for granted.
"The irony," Rose says, "is that now A Christmas Carol is taken for granted. It's that one ornament you put up every year. So people go and see it and have a good time and maybe get something from it, but it doesn't have the same impact that was originally intended."
Rose thinks the Cincinnati Playhouse's annual production of A Christmas Carol does a wonderful job of recapturing Dickens' original tale. But this season the actor is pleased to be part of presenting the story from a different point of view, Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol, a retelling of the tale from the perspective of Scrooge's dead partner.
"It starts exactly where A Christmas Carol starts," Rose explains, with Dickens' famous opening line: "Marley was dead to begin with." But instead of Scrooge, it focuses on Marley and the afterlife. If you remember your Christmas lore, you'll recall how Marley's ghost returns to his old business partner on Christmas Eve to warn about mending his gruff and unforgiving ways. Rose, who plays Marley for CSF, says the tightfisted moneylender has ended up in Hell, and the only way out is to return and straighten out Scrooge.
"He quickly signs the escape clause without even reading it," Rose says. "How Marley goes about saving Scrooge is precisely how A Christmas Carol plays out. But audiences get to find out how Marley got into the chains, how he decided to haunt Scrooge in this particular manner. You find out, too, where the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future come from. You get to see that they aren't exactly what they appear to be."
Chicago actor Tom Mula developed this adaptation a few years ago as a popular one-man seasonal show for that city's Goodman Theatre. He's helped CSF re-shape it for their acting company. Rose will be joined by Jeremy Dubin, Brian Isaac Phillips and Anne E. Schilling. (Initially it was to be handled by five actors, but Giles Davies has stepped out for some knee surgery to ensure he'll be ready for CSF's upcoming productions of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and Shakespeare's Othello.)
Rose says Mula has done a great job of telling the story in a manner that parallels Dickens' original. "If you've ever seen A Christmas Carol, come see this show," Rose urges. "I guarantee that every five minutes, once Marley really starts to kick in on Scrooge, you will be sitting there going, 'Oh, yeah! Was that what was really going on? Oh, that's interesting!"
Mula has taken the story down to some fundamental issues, according to Rose. "He really grinds it down to basic human emotions. Questions arise like, 'While you might be treated evilly by a bully in your past, does that justify you in ultimate revenge in the future?' Or 'If you find out something horrible about yourself and you shared that with someone else, does that give you a right to pin all the blame on that person?' "
"I hope a lot of people go to see A Christmas Carol (at the Cincinnati Playhouse)," Rose says, "and also come see Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol here. I think it will be a good perspective: I think they will have the answers to these questions themselves."
Rose likes what Mula has emphasized in this script: "He shows that the rewards of being good are just as strong, but they're very difficult to maintain, very difficult to grab. He goes a great job of putting it in Marley's perspective."
Marley's 24-hour mission to reform Scrooge is having its effect on Rose himself. "I've found myself being more nice," he says. "I can't help it. It's a powerful piece. It really sort of encourages you to be kind."
Charles Dickens must be smiling, too.
JACOB MARLEY'S CHRISTMAS CAROL opens on Thursday at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival, 719 Race St., and continues through Dec. 31. The Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park's presentation of the traditional A CHRISTMAS CAROL opens Friday and runs through Dec. 30.
