By STEVEN JUPITER
BRANDON—Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” is a beloved holiday classic, but we’ve all seen or read it a thousand times. While the play’s message of redemption remains as powerful as ever, our familiarity with the piece may dampen our enthusiasm to run out to see it again this year.
Bah, humbug!
This weekend, a new twist on the classic will be performed by Rutland-based One Room Theatrics (ORT) in Brandon, Rutland, and Poultney. Instead of a conventional presentation of the story of Ebenezer Scrooge and his transformation from miserly to generous, ORT will present a “play within a play”: ORT’s actors will play actors putting on a 1940s radio play of the Christmas classic. The piece is called “A Christmas Carol: The Radio Show” and was adapted from Dickens’ original by Joe Landry.
The 5 performing members of the ORT company will be dressed in 1940s period costume and will be playing multiple characters, both as 1940s radio actors and as the characters they portray in the radio broadcast of “A Christmas Carol.” David Kiefner, for example, will be playing 1940s actor Freddie Filmore who in turn is playing both Scrooge and Santa.
Now, those who remember “A Christmas Carol” will wonder where Santa figures into all this, since he doesn’t appear in the Dickens original. Another fun twist to this production is that the performance of “A Christmas Carol” will be punctuated by commercial breaks just as radio broadcasts were back in the day. So, the actors will need to abandon their Dickens characters to become new characters in commercials for the radio show’s on-air sponsors.
This will require the actors to put extra effort into creating unique vocal profiles for each of their characters, just as radio actors would have had to do in the 1940s.
“We have 5 actors playing 41 characters,” said Martin VanBuren III, who is directing this production for ORT. “We really have to dig into the characters. We wanted to make sure that if we closed our eyes, we could hear the differences among the characters, even if they were being played by the same actors.”
“It’s exciting for the cast members,” he added.
Mr. Kiefner has done extensive work narrating audiobooks, where he needed to create distinctive vocal profiles for multiple characters.
“Everyone has to come up with different voices for every character,” said Kiefner. And the relatively confined stagework—the show takes place in a radio recording studio—means that the actors need to use their voices especially well in order to keep the audience’s attention.
“Our voices need to express emotion and shades of meaning,” he said.
Kiefner will have to rely on his voice alone to convey Scrooge’s transformation from bitter to warm, since none of the usual visual signals will be available to him as a “radio performer.”
“At the beginning, he’s a miserly old jerk,” he laughed. “But at the end he’s had his epiphany and is dancing around. It’s really the middle phase that will be the toughest. I want to show that he’s having small revelations but still clinging to his past ways.”
“The actors need to be animated, expressive, and emotive,” said VanBuren. “There will also be a mix of pre-recorded and live sound effects.”
And while “A Christmas Carol” isn’t normally thought of as comedy, the play-within-a-play format of Landry’s adaptation gives the performers windows for humor that wouldn’t otherwise exist in the production.
“There aren’t many comedic opportunities in the original,” said VanBuren. “This version leans heavily into comedy during the ‘commercial breaks.’ The cast has as much fun with it as the audience. I want to make sure everyone is having a blast.”
One Room Theatrics will perform “A Christmas Carol: The Radio Show” at Stone Valley Arts in Poultney on Friday, Dec. 13 at 7 p.m.; at the Chaffee Art Center in Rutland on Saturday, Dec. 14 at 7 p.m.; and at the Lilac Inn in Brandon on Sunday, Dec. 15 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $10 each and can be purchased online through the Paramount Theatre (paramountvt.org) or at the door.
The Lilac Inn in Brandon is an unconventional venue for a theater production, but the antique feel of the building will suit the vintage setting of the radio play.
“This is a charming take on a family favorite,” said VanBuren, noting that the show is totally suitable for children. He added that ORT, which was founded at the beginning of 2024, is eager to create its own annual Christmas traditions and that he hopes to write a holiday piece of his own for ORT to perform every year.
“We don’t want to do the same things everyone else is doing,” he said.
No worries about that!
So, for anyone interested in a different take on a familiar holiday favorite, check out “A Christmas Carol: The Radio Show” this weekend.
Learn more about One Room Theatrics at oneroomtheatrics.com.
