A year later

It’s amazing to think how quickly a year passes. It’s again, December and Christmas is now over. This is the first holiday season in a few years now where I didn’t perform A Christmas Carol. The Ross Valley Players weren’t interested in co-producing the show this year (even though it was very successful last year) and I decided to enjoy the holidays without the pressures of mounting it again. It’s a lot of work to get up to speed on the show, let alone produce and manage the technical aspects on top of it.

This year, it was my turn to see A Christmas Carol wherever I could. The biggest spectacle of the year was the Disney version starring Jim Carrey. I have to admit that I was pretty skeptical about this version when I heard about it a year or so ago (A buddy of mine, Matt Henerson, had a small role as the poulterer) so my expectations were low. I have to say that it was an impressively done film. A number of scenes were over the top like shrinking Scrooge down to 6 inches tall and the icicle scene (in typical Disney fashion), but the way the story was cut was well done. In fact, there was an amazing similarity between the things that were cut from the film and the things I cut in my adaptation. If you were to go scene by scene, things would match up pretty closely. So, maybe I’m biased, but apparently great minds think alike.

I also saw CenterREP’s version of Carol, which had a bunch of friends in it. I wasn’t too thrilled with the adaptation itself, but there were some standout performances. Michael Ray Wisely as the Ghost of Christmas Present was probably the best thing about it, not to mention Michael Berg as Fezziwig. Jeff Draper and Michael Wiles also had some nice moments. There were some sweet musical interludes with a caroling quartet and a few of the special effects were pretty good (the ones that worked without a technical hitch).

On Christmas Eve, I did a reading of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas on KSRO radio. That was my small contribution to Christmas this year. What about next year? That remains to be seen, but I think the Modern Shakespeare Company might explore the opportunity to partner with Humbug Theatre on a few projects. More to come.